Government Trust, Environmental Pollution Perception, and Environmental Governance Satisfaction

Abstract

Environmental governance is related to the healthy living standard of human beings and the sustainable development of an economic society. It is of great significance to explore the influence of government trust and environmental pollution perception on environmental governance satisfaction to improve the performance of government environmental governance. Based on the CSS2019 survey data, 3872 survey samples were statistically analyzed, and the optimal scale regression model was used to analyze the relationship between government trust, environmental pollution perception, and environmental governance satisfaction. The results showed that 52.27% of the respondents believed that the satisfaction of environmental governance was good, and both government trust and environmental pollution perception had significant positive effects on the satisfaction of environmental governance. The trust level of the central government, district and county governments, and township governments shows a “differential government trust” state, which is pyramidal. However, the impact of government trust on environmental governance satisfaction shows an inverted pyramid structure, and the township government has the largest effect, which is not matched with the distribution of government trust level. The influence effect of air pollution perception is relatively large, and the public is sensitive to air pollution. Government trust has an impact on the satisfaction of environmental governance through the “expectation-response” path. People are close to the township government and have the opportunity to contact and interact with the township government and its staff. They can directly observe the governance performance and share the public goods of environmental governance. Therefore, it is necessary to further improve the trust level of township governments, strengthen the control of air pollution and improve the township government’s environmental governance ability.