The Impact Of Social Capital On Residents' Environmental Behavior-An Empirical Study

With the increasingly serious environmental problems in our country,environmental protection has become the common concern of the country and society.In terms of environmental protection,our country mainly uses command-control and market approch to solve environmental problems,but in fact,both the government and the market can be ineffective and inefficient in environmental governance.In recent years,the government and the academic have begun to pay attention to the residents' environmental behavior,and it is regarded as an effective supplement to the government and the market,because of its spontaneity and universality.Although the residents' environmental behavior is very important,it often faces the dilemma of collective action.Social capital,as lubricant of the community,can effectively facilitate the environment collective action,which makes it the key factors affecting residents' environmental behavior.This paper mainly studies the impact of social capital on our country's residents' environmental behavior.Social capital can affect the residents' environmental behavior through three merchanisms: cooperation mechanism,information mechanism and restraint mechanism.In the cooperation mechanism,social capital can promote the environmental behaviour by enhanciong the cooperation willingness and reducing the cooperation cost;in the information mechanism,social capital can promote the environmental behaviour by opening channels of information and enhancing the credibility of information,and so on;in the constraint mechanism,social capital can promote the environmental behaviour through the internalization of environmental awareness,the use of external punishment,such as reputation and social pressure.Through the above three mechanisms,social capital can effectively promote the environmental behavior of residents.In this paper,we use the multivariate linear model and Ologit model to study the influence of social capital on the environmental behavior.Through multiple linear regression analysis,social capital has a significant impact on both residents' private and public environmental behavior.Through the Ologit regression analysis,in 5 private environmental behaviors,garbage sorting,environmental problems discussing and environmental problems focusing are affected more by social capital,in 5 public environmental behaviors,government environmental activities,non-governmental environmental activities and environmental complaints are affected more by social capital.In the dimensions of social capital,general trust,social norms and social network have a wide impact on private environmental behavior,general trust,institutional trust and social norms have a wide impact on public environmental behavior.The above conclusions are confirmed by the sample of urban and rural residents,and it is also found that social capital has a greater and more widely impact on the environmental behavior of urban residents in China.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: strengthening policy guidance,improve the environmental awareness and environmental behavior;playing the role of social capital,to encourage China's residents to participate in environmental protection;strengthening the construction of social capital,to enhance the effect of social capital on environmental behavior;exploring the mechanism of social capital,to improve specific environmental behavior.