Residents' environmental behavior in eco‐community development and its influencing factors: Evidence from Dongying City, Shandong Province in China

Abstract

AbstractEco‐community Development (ECD) is a specific embodiment of city sustainability and ecological civilization construction at local scale, and residents are one of the core stakeholders. They engage in ECD through various activities and their environmental behavior is the result of the interaction of “human” and “environment”. The main focus of this study is to measure residents' environmental behavior and explore its influencing factors. Previous studies have limited implications to measure residents' participation intensity and give less attention to explore the impact of “environment” factors on people's environmental behavior, especially the influence of situational factors. Public environmental facilities and activities (PEFA) are important supporting measures in communities and the main type of situational factors. In this context, we initially propose “Participation Intensity (PI)” to measure residents' environmental behavior from the processes of household lifestyle, consumption, recreation and social interaction. Then, we apply OLS regression model to analyze its determinants based on a questionnaire survey to 586 residents in Dongying City, Shandong Province in China. The findings show that residents' PI varies and PEFA are powerful predictors. Furthermore, residents' psychological factors, including concern and attitude to ECD and their satisfaction on the role of neighborhood committee, as well as socio‐demographic characteristics, including gender, education level and length of residence also play important roles on PI. Our study provides a new perspective for understanding residents' participation in community environmental governance and suggests useful references for promoting ECD.