Chengjun Wang* and Xu Zhang
College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, China
*Corresponding author: Chengjun Wang, College of Economics and Management, Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, China
Submission: March 22, 2021Published: March 29, 2021
ISSN 2578-0336 Volume8 Issue2
The continuous deterioration of the rural public environment is a significant problem
faced by many developing countries. It has brought severe negative effects on the lives of
rural households and has become an urgent problem in rural public governance. Due to the
nature of quasi-public goods of the rural public environment. It is determined that its effective
governance must be collectively participated by rural residents. Generally, governments
promote rural households’ willingness to participate in environmental governance in two
ways: “behavior demonstration” and “education guidance.” “Behavior demonstration” means
governments provided public environment projects in rural areas, and through this behavior
demonstration to drive rural households’ willingness to participate in environmental
governance; and “education guidance” refers to the government’s environmental governance
education and training for rural households to improve their environment Willingness to
participate in governance. We believe that governments should play the role of an educational
guide in promoting rural households’ participation in rural environmental governance
activities.
First of all, when the governments funded the implementation of public living environment
projects in rural areas and conducted “behavior demonstrations” for rural households, it also
brings free-rider problem. Since the marginal benefit of providing public goods is less than
the marginal cost, no rural households try to provide public services and are unwilling to
participate in environmental governance. Every potential public service provider is taking
a free ride in governments’ public services. Therefore, when the government conducts
“behavior demonstration,” rural households’ willingness to participate will be lowered.
However, governments enhance rural households’ environmental risk perception and
social responsibility and improve rural households’ environmental governance skills
through “educational guidance.” Rural households will then play their subjective initiative to
participate in rural environmental governance.
In order to verify the above hypothesis, we collected survey data from 100 villages in China
and established a mediation and moderation effect model to analyze the promotion effects of
the two activities on the increase of rural households’ willingness to participate. The results
found that when all other things being equal, governments’ “Behavior Demonstration” will
reduce rural households’ willingness to participate by 59%, indicating that rural households’
free-riding behavior is severe. The government’s “educational guidance” can increase rural
households’ willingness to participate by 19.5%. Besides, these results will be moderated
by the heterogeneity of rural households’ environmental risk perception capabilities. Rural
households’ environmental risk perception can weaken the adverse effects of “Behavior
Demonstration.”
All in all, governments should play the role of education and guidance when increasing
rural households’ willingness to participate in rural environmental governance. In addition,
in rural environmental governance, rural households should avoid “free-riding” behavior,
establish a long-term mechanism, and achieve sustainable development of the rural
environment.
© 2021 Chengjun Wang. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.