Environmental concern among Chinese youth: the roles of knowledge and cultural bias.

This article uses Cultural Theory (CT) to complement the Knowledge Deficit Model (KDM) in explaining the environmental concern of Chinese youth. We use a large-scale nationwide sample and adopt multiple multi-level models. We find that the effect of knowledge varies with measurements of knowledge and environmental concern. Youth whose cultural orientation is dominated by egalitarianism are most concerned, followed by those for whom hierarchy is dominant, while those for whom individualism and fatalism are dominant are least concerned. As expected, egalitarianism increases environmental concern while fatalism decreases it, and hierarchism also increases national concern. But, contrary to expectations, individualism has no effect on either and hierarchism does not increase personal concern. We suggest how to educate culturally diverse youth about environmental risk. As one of the first efforts to operationalize CT for survey research in China, this article also suggests how to improve measurement of CT there. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2022.2033705. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Environmental Education Research is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)