A Study Of The Impact Of Social Capital On Villagers’ Participation Behavior In Rural Human Environment Governance

Rural human environment management is one of the critical contents of the construction of new socialist countryside.Working in the integrated development of urban and rural areas is essential,and a suitable human environment is indispensable for improving villagers’ quality of life and happiness.After implementing the threeyear action plan,the overall rural human environment has been dramatically improved.However,in this process,environmental management mainly relies on the governmentled.The government faces enormous financial pressure under this mode of governance.The participation of villagers could be more vigorous,which makes it easier to maintain the effectiveness of rural human environment management.There still needs to be a particular gap with the national goal of significantly improving the rural human environment by 2025.The report of the 20 th Party Congress in 2022 once again proposed to achieve continuous improvement of the rural human environment and to guide more villagers to participate in environmental management.Therefore,effectively improving villagers’ participation behavior is a complex problem in rural human environment management.Social capital breaks the prisoner’s dilemma by influencing individual psychological factors,thus affecting villagers’ behavior.Meanwhile,as an important external environmental factor,government intervention directly or indirectly interferes with villagers’ participation behavior by using different regulatory approaches.However,existing studies are often limited to exploring individual or environmental factors without considering the combined effects of individual and environmental factors.Therefore,based on the idea of holistic theory,this study takes villagers’ social capital as the entry point to explore the direct influence of social capital on villagers’ participation behavior and the mediating effects of two psychological factors,namely,villagers’ sense of gain and group identity,on the relationship between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior;and introduces the environmental factor of government intervention to analyze the moderating effects of constraint regulation and incentive regulation on the relationship between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior.The study also introduces the environmental factor of government intervention and analyzes the moderating effect of constraint regulation and incentive regulation between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior.Based on the above research questions,this study constructs a structural equation model on social capital,sense of gain,group identity,government intervention,and villagers’ participation behavior based on social capital theory and public participation theory.It conducts an empirical study by visiting villagers in rural areas of Yunnan Province to understand their current participation status and distributing questionnaires to collect data.The empirical results lead to the following main conclusions.First,social capital significantly and positively influences villagers’ participation behavior in rural human environmental governance,further confirming that villagers with higher social capital participate in environmental governance more significantly.On the other hand,in this informal group,most villagers expect to integrate into the group and be respected and recognized by the group,so If they choose to “free ride”behavior,they will not only be condemned by others but also destroy trust with others.Therefore,villagers will choose to cooperate with others and participate in the collective interest of habitat management.Second,social capital significantly and positively affects villagers’ sense of gain and group identity;the sense of gain and group identity significantly and positively affect villagers’ participation behavior in rural human management;villagers’ sense of gain and group identity partially mediate the role between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior.Specifically,the positive effect of villagers’ social capital on participation behavior is partially transmitted to participation behavior through a sense of gain and group identity.This suggests that villagers’ social capital not only directly positively influences villagers’ participation behavior in rural human management,but also can indirectly influence participation behavior through villagers’ sense of gain and group identity.Therefore,the sense of gain and group identity play a good transmission role as psychological factors between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior.Third,incentive regulation plays a negative moderating role between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior,while the moderating role of constraint regulation between social capital and villagers’ participation behavior is not confirmed.This indicates the complexity of government intervention in promoting villagers’ participation behavior.In general,government incentives can create a crowding-out effect on social capital,and the higher the social capital of villagers,the more significant the crowding-out effect is.However,the restraint type of regulation can work for some villagers,but excessive restraint or inappropriate punishment may lead to villagers’ rebelliousness;moreover,such coercive means may work temporarily,but cannot make villagers’ participation behavior change continuously.Finally,according to the research findings,this study proposes countermeasures to improve villagers’ participation in rural human environment management.In the process of rural habitat management,policies should be conducive to the improvement of villagers’ social capital,respect objective conditions,tailor policies to local conditions,not engage in “one size fits all”,increase incentives for villagers with low social capital,and gradually guide villagers to achieve self-management.