A Comparative Analysis Of The Ways Of Public Resistance And Regional Differences In PX Projects

Since the 1990s,the trend of Chinese environmental resistance has been rising.After 2005,China stepped onto a period that the environmental resistance is high growth.The Chinese public,most of them choose to keep silent when face the other environmental pollution hazards,but different with that,the public is no longer "silent"about the environmental harm caused by PX projects,along with public anti-PX project mass incidents continue to occur throughout the country.This paper divides the public’s resistance to PX projects into institutional resistance and non-institutional resistance,and discusses its influencing factors.At the same time,this paper also proposes to comparative analysis that the residents’ environmen resistance behaviors and results in Xiamen and Zhangzhou,which is for the same PX project.Based on the survey of residents’ environment resistance in Xiamen and Zhangzhou,we find that the public has taken a more positive response to the environmental risks brought by the PX project.In terms of institutional resistance,380 respondents took measures such as "reflections to the neighborhood committees","direct protests against the polluting units","report to the work units"and "complaints from all levels of government",which proportion reached 42.1%.The "removing" protests accounted for 12.3%.In terms of non-institutional resistance,the public took non-institutional protests measures such as "complaints from the news media" and "sought for network support",which accounted for 20.3%.According to the results of multiple linear regression analysis,we found that the influencing factors of institutionalized protesting behavior and non-institutionalized protesting behavior are different.Speaking on the institutional resistance,the upper class,the organization’s participation,the project operator’s trust,the expert’s trust and risk perception all have significant influences on institutionalized protesting behavior.Speaking on the non-institutional resistance,the network diversity,the organization’s participation,and the project operator trust have significant influences on the non-institutional resistance.According to the results of Logistic regression analysis,the factors influencing the behavior of the residents in Xiamen and Zhangzhou are different.Speaking on the Xiamen residents’ environmental resistance,the middle class and the organizations resistance have positive significant influences on the environmental resistance,annual household income has negative significant influences on environmental resistance.Speaking on the Zhangzhou residents’ environmental resistance,the organization’s participation has positive significant influences on the environmental resistance,the trust of the project operators has negative significant influences on environmental resistance.In terms of system trust,especially in government trust,both residents in Xiamen and Zhangzhou are quite low.According to statistics analyses,we find that social economic status,social relationship networks,and system trust are the main factors that influence the institutional resistance and non-institutional resistance.This paper argues that when dealing with public environmental protests,distinguishing different types of resistance helps to resolve quickly and effectively,and maintain social stability and development.Public trust in governments,media,experts and project operators,affecting their environmental protest behaviors and methods,and rebuilding system trust,especially government trust,is an important prerequisite of the government’s establishment of an environmental resistance response mechanism.The findings of this paper are as follows:first,the environmental resistance is divided into institutional resistance and non-institutional resistance to discuss,which are better to understand the characteristics of different environmental resistance behavior.Second,to compare the environmental resistance in different regions of the same project,and explore the regional differences about environmental resistance,which can enrich the study of environmental resistance.