When Environmental Activism Meets Local Governance: The Role of Government Transparency and Responsiveness in China

摘要

Existing literature has examined the contextual effects on individual environmental activism, but little research has been conducted to investigate how local-level governance factors affect individual environmental activism, particularly in developing countries. This paper investigates the moderating effects of local government transparency and responsiveness on the motivation-activism relationship in China. We compiled a provincial-level database capturing local government transparency and responsiveness and combined this with data from the China General Social Survey 2013. Multilevel modeling analysis revealed that motivation factors at the individual level have stronger effects on individual engagement in environmental activism when government transparency and responsiveness are more encouraging at the provincial level. The results not only point to local governance as a contextual factor for understanding individual environmental activism in China but also highlight the need to consider the interactions of individuals in the political context to understand how individual factors translate into environmental activism in many developing countries.