Investigation On The Public Environmental Consciousness And Actions And The Impact Factors In Chongqing Municipality

Public environmental consciousness is one of the most important indicators for national civilization, which reflects the environmental status in many aspects, such as the public recognition on environment problems, the environmental-friendly actions, the environment protection attitudes and the environmental obligations. Designs four questionnaires about the public environmental awareness and behaviors for primary, secondary and university students and members of the community, respectively, and selects some cities, towns and rural areas in Shapingba District, Jiangbei District and Changshou District of Chongqing Municipality as survey areas. The questionnaires surveys were conducted to totally 1350. The survey data will help to understand the status quo of the public environmental awareness and behaviors in Chongqing Municipality. The correlation between the factors of age, urban and rural difference, education, economic and the environmental awareness and behaviors are analyzed by using the Chi-square test.A database is established with the help of SPSS, and the data is analyzed. The main results as followed:(1) People's evaluation on the environmental quality of Chongqing Municipality. The people living either the urban, towns or rural areas think that the main environmental problems in Chongqing are air pollution, water pollution and solid waste pollution, and the main causes for the problems are ordinal the poor environmental awareness, the profitable enterprises neglecting environmental protection, and the Government attaching less importance to it. The survey results also show that these environmental problems aroused the Government's and the people's attention in recent years and have been improved somewhat, however, people still think the environmental quality in Chongqing is poor and they are not satisfied with it.(2) The public environmental knowledge, awareness and action in Chongqing Municipal.The public environmental knowledge: 40.3% of the people investigated self-evaluate that their environmental knowledge are fewer, or less, and only 10% of them think their environmental knowledge levels are relatively good. The public environmental awareness: the survey results show that the public think people in Chongqing have poor environmental awareness. Although the majority would safeguard their own environmental rights and interests, there are quite a lot people do not know what their environmental rights are and how to protect. The public environmental behaviors: the consumer habits are not good in Chongqing. Most of the people surveyed express the willingness to participate in environmental protection activities and to pay some fee, but few of them do really take part in these activities, because of busy with work, less environmental awareness, or lack of opportunities.(3) The evaluation for the environmental education and activities organized by communities and schools.Accounting for 54.8% of the community people surveyed said that the main ways for their environmental knowledge learning are from radio and television, followed by newspapers and magazines (46.8%) , while as high as 74.4 % of students believe that broadcasting, television is the most important way for their environmental knowledge acquisition, followed by school education (35.5 percent). This result shows that on the one hand the media (radio, television, newspaper) plays very important role on the people learning environmental knowledge, and on the other hand the environmental education ways either in schools or communities is very simple. Thus the media's environmental education function should be further improved and the education methods should be diversified. In addition, the people think the extent and effectiveness of the environmental education activities are not satisfying.The analyses of correlation between the age, urban and rural difference, education level, income difference and the people's environmental awareness and behaviors show that the main factor are people's urban and rural differences, the education level and income difference. The age factor has no significant correlation with people's environmental awareness and behaviors.The measures of raising Chongqing public environmental awareness are brought forward: (1) the environmental education programs should be different based on different time, areas and people. (2) Executing the environmental education programs into communities. (3) Using the theories and methods of psychology and pedagogy, even economic intervention to increase the public environmental awareness.