Jun Chen

Environmental governance is related to the healthy living standard of human beings and the sustainable development of an economic society. It is of great significance to explore the influence of government trust and environmental pollution perception on environmental governance satisfaction to improve the performance of government environmental governance. Based on the CSS2019 survey data, 3872 survey samples were statistically analyzed, and the optimal scale regression model was used to analyze the relationship between government trust, environmental pollution perception, and environmental governance satisfaction. The results showed that 52.27% of the respondents believed that the satisfaction of environmental governance was good, and both government trust and environmental pollution perception had significant positive effects on the satisfaction of environmental governance. The trust level of the central government, district and county governments, and township governments shows a “differential government trust” state, which is pyramidal. However, the impact of government trust on environmental governance satisfaction shows an inverted pyramid structure, and the township government has the largest effect, which is not matched with the distribution of government trust level. The influence effect of air pollution perception is relatively large, and the public is sensitive to air pollution. Government trust has an impact on the satisfaction of environmental governance through the “expectation-response” path. People are close to the township government and have the opportunity to contact and interact with the township government and its staff. They can directly observe the governance performance and share the public goods of environmental governance. Therefore, it is necessary to further improve the trust level of township governments, strengthen the control of air pollution and improve the township government’s environmental governance ability.

Based on a survey of 2343 rural residents in China, this paper adopts a binary logistic regression model as the analytical tool to study the impact of rural residents’ social network and sense of responsibility regarding their participation in environmental governance. The results show that the cost, frequency and scope of social network activities have positive and significant influences on resident participation in rural environmental governance. The cost of a social network is conducive to building a rural social network, enhancing the connection of interests and promoting the formation of a rural community. Extending social network objectives from family members to villagers can improve the cultural identity and emotional identity of rural residents. The increase in the frequency of social network activities can not only enhance trust among residents, but also reduce the cost of environmental governance mobilization. The scope of a social network acts as an inhibitor whereby social interaction beyond the scope of rural areas will reduce identification with rural emotions. The four dimensions, including responsibility cognition, responsibility will, responsibility emotion and responsibility behavior have significant influences on resident participation in rural environmental governance. Residents’ sense of responsibility plays the role of an introverted driving force for them to take part in rural environmental governance, which itself helps to overcome “non-participation” behaviors of “rational smallholders” to a certain extent. Furthermore, it endows rural environmental governance with resilience. So, it is of significance to enhance rural residents’ social networks and to improve rural residents’ cognition of collective responsibility.