Social relationships, public media, and pro-environmental behaviors

We explore the heterogeneity of pro-environmental behaviors embedded in social contexts from the perspectives of both social relationships and public media. Using new data from a Chinese nationally representative sample, we employ latent cluster models to identify patterns in social relationships and public media. Then we examine how differences across patterns of social relationships and public media correlate with differences in the likelihood that people take pro-environmental actions. Our results show that individuals with more exposure to green social contexts are more likely to take pro-environmental actions and, in particular, that public media plays a more important role than social relationships. The finding implies that developing countries can use public media to promote public participation in environmental protection.