Values,social Capital And Residents’ Environmental Behaviors

Existing research shows that personal environmental concerns do not always translate into corresponding environmental protection behaviors.An important factor that affects the intensity of environmental concerns is the external context in which the behavior occurred.Previous researches have discussed the impact of political systems,levels of economic development and culture on environmental concerns-environmental behaviors,or the direct impact of social capital of external contexts on individual environmental behaviors,ignoring social capital’s moderating role on environmental concerns-environmental behaviors relationship.In contrast,this study investigates the ways in which social capital variables regulate the behavioral impact of personal values,one of the most basic concepts of environmental concern,that is,the interaction effect of personal value and social capital.This paper uses a layered linear model as the method,based on a sample of 7,980 residents of126 communities in YH and XS districts of HZ City,to examine the interaction between values and social capital in residents’ environmental protection behaviors,and analyze social capital(personal-level social capital and community-level social capital)how to modify the impact of values on environmental behavior.The research results show that the interaction effect between social capital and values varies depending on the level of social capital itself.Specifically,there is no statistically significant relationship between social capital at the individual level and value-behavior,and there is a significant relationship between social capital at the community level and value-behavior gap,that is,in areas where community social capital is low,there is a strong correlation between residents’ self-transcendent values and pro-environment behaviors.The research findings in this article highlight the important role of social capital factors among local social factors in explaining changes in the value-behavior relationship,which has a certain theoretical contribution,and also provides new guidance for local governments to promote local residents’ environmental protection behaviors,improve the environmental quality of communities,and enhance the community governance performance.