By Zhao Zheng, Zhang Xiaolu & Li Fen, Research Team on “The Innovation and Development of China’s Social Governance in Rural Areas in the New Era”, Institute of Public Administration and Human Resources, DRC

Research Report, Special Issue, No.97, 2019 (Total 1725)

2019-11-5

Abstract: Based on rural residents’ daily activities, this paper gives a quantitative illustration of Internet’s impact on rural environmental governance and its functioning mechanism. The research findings are given as follows. First, the Internet has a significant positive impact on rural environmental governance. Residents using the Internet and those without using it show remarkable difference in most of the environment protection activities. Second, compared with environment protection activities in private fields, the Internet exerts a more prominent impact on the activities of rural residents in public fields. Third, when the Internet acts on rural environmental governance, environmental awareness plays a principal role. Fourth, the demographic characteristics of rural residents are closely related to rural environmental governance and education background produces a major influence on environment protection activities of rural residents. In the future, attention needs to be paid to the role of the Internet in impacting rural environmental governance. We need to strengthen information infrastructure in rural areas and “Internet Plus public services”, so that the Internet could bring more benefits to rural residents. We also need to enhance the information knowledge of rural residents and focus on personnel cultivation on IT application in rural areas. In addition, we need to accelerate the information-based drive of environment protection and promote the participation of rural residents in public affairs.

Key words: the Internet, rural environmental governance, environment protection activities of the residents