Study On Chinese Resident Environmental Behavior Affected By Confucian Values And Individual Responsibility

As the global ecological changes has brought serious environmental crisis, theproblems of the natural resource exhausted and sustainable development arebecoming the most concerns,which are also the most serious challenges for humanity.Many environmental issues, including global warming,dusthaze in cities, air pollution,water shortages, city environmental noise, are the result of the human behavior, and therelationship between man and nature and the psychology and behavior cause involved arebehind these issues.The environmental damage from human being are threatening the lifeand its quality of human beings. So it’s necessary to change human behavior to reduce theexcessive exploitation of natural resources for promoting and enhancing responsiblebehavior for enviorment.Values are the social prduct of the cultural traditions,so China has different culturalbackgrounds from the western countries, its values and the ones reflected in the treatmenton the environment are also different. Cultural value system of the modern society stronglyrelies on the traditional cultural values of the society. Chinese traditional culture is thesource of modern Chinese culture,which is an ancient system originated within thousandsof years of history and the continuation of the culture. Thousands of years of the Chineseheritage from the history and culture constitutes a unique system of values and theformation of behavioral characteristics with Chinese characteristics.Among these, theimpact by Confucian values is deep-seated for Chinese.The Environmental behavior has many types, including private bahavior and publicbahavior.Based on the study and understanding of the environmental behavior of theChinese,the paper studies the influence of traditional Confucian values on theenvironmental behavior of the Chinese and its ways to construct the model which canreflect the environmental behavior of the Chinese for providing theoretical support with thehelp of environmental governance, trying to create the measurement system which presentsthe Chinese traditional Confucian values and the personal responsibility.Specifically,the study in the paper is divided into direct and indirect environmental behaviorfor the research based on the characteristics of the environmental impact on theenvironmental behavior,the study gets three dimensions of the the Confucianismvalues,which are environmental concern, the group and the face valueby hackling Confucianism and Confucian thoughts with the help of studying the influence onenvironmental behavior.The study also show the influence of traditional Confucian valueson the environmental behavior of the Chinese and influencial approach by collectingdatumand analysizing the questionnaires and empirical analysis using structural equationmodel and the medium effects of the personal responsibility on the side of the influence oftraditional Confucian values on environmental behavior and as well as the the moderatingeffect of environmental behavior of the values for the individual differences.The model onenvironmental behavior for the Chinese will be constructed.The paper reaches thefollowing conclusions on the base of the analysis.I. The influence of Confucian thoughtson environment protection behavior has threedimensions. The first level is the concept of frinedly environment,Which advocates friendlyattitude to the heaven and earth, treating the bird, the beast,the grass and the woodwithlove; the second level is about the system and the behavior standards, establishing theresponsibility consciousness and behavior for protecting and respecting the nature; the thirdlevel is to advocate the direct environmental behavior and the indirect environmentalbehavior.II.The traditional Confucian values have a direct impact on the environmentalbehavior of the Chinese residents (directly and indirectly) with the differences fromdifferent dimensions. The dimension of "group" has positive effects on both the directenvironmental protection act and the indirect environmental behavior, the dimension of"environmental concern" has a positive impact on the direct environmental behavior andthe same effect with"Persuasion"in the indirect environmental behavior, but the impact onthe "social behavior" is negative. The view of "face" has positive effect on the indirectenvironmental behavior and negative effect on the resource saving behavior.III. The personal responsibility has an effect on environmental behavior for theChinese residents directly and indirectly. Personal responsibility has a positive influence onthe direct environmental behavior and the "Persuasion" in the indirect environmentalbehavior, but the impacts on the "social behavior" are not significant.Confucian values alsohave indirect effects on environmental protection behavior through personalresponsibility for the environmental behavior of the Chinese residents indirectly. Thedimensions of Confucian values for "environment concern" and "group" have a positiveeffect on"individual responsibility", but the view of "face"has a negative influence on"personal responsibility weakly.The dimensions of"environment concern" and "group"for Confucian values have a direct positive impact on environmental behavior and the"Persuasion" in the indirect environmental behaviorthrough personal responsibility, but ithas no effect on social behavior.Iv. The individual factors has an effect on the direct and indirect environmentalbehavior by the residents. This paper analyses three variables of the gender, the incomeand the level of education.Among these factors,the gender has the maximum influence andthe factor of the income has a minimum influence. Specifically, the factor of the gender canregulate the individual responsibility for the direct and indirect environmentalbehavior.The level of education has positive effects on the direct environmental behaviorand the indirect environmental behavior, it can also regulate the relationship between theConfucian values and direct the environmental behavior and the relationship between theConfucian values and the individual responsibility. The factor of income can also moderatethe relationship between the Confucian values and indirect environmental behavior.Overall, the dimension of “group” in the values of Confucian has the maximuminfluence on the environmental behavior of the Chinese residents, followed by theenvironmental attitudes (environmental concern), while the view of “face”,which affect thebehavior of the Chinese people strongly, has a minor effect on the environmentalbehavior.The Individual factors have moderating effects on the environmental behavior, butit has fewer effects than Confucian values.The research results have important meaning for the management and protection forChinese environment. Part of the papaer gives answers to the arguments about “ethics”and“morality”,which also proves the values of Confucian has both direct and indirect influenceon the envionmental behavior.When the environmental governance is the target of thewhole nation, the perception of the environmental protection will be strengthened by theChinese residents.They also have important meaning for the enterprise.The residents withstrong environmental awareness will choose the green products to purchase.