Orientation of internet use, government trust, and public environmental satisfaction an empirical study in Mainland China

Abstract

Public environmental satisfaction is related to the healthy living standard of human beings and sustainable development of an economic society. In the context of the continuous updating of Internet technologies, it is necessary to study the correlation between Internet use and public environmental satisfaction, but few studies have focused on the effect of the orientation of Internet use on public environmental satisfaction, and its mediating mechanisms. This study considered survey data from the China Social Survey 2019 which were conducted in a sample of 5,112 residents, SPSS 16.0 and ordinary least squares regression model was used to analyze the relationship between orientation of Internet use, government trust and public environmental satisfaction. The results showed politically-oriented Internet use was positively correlated with public environmental satisfaction, and entertainment-oriented Internet use did not correlate with public environmental satisfaction. Furthermore, government trust partially mediated the relation between politically-oriented Internet use and public environmental satisfaction. Several implication policies are suggested for improving public environmental satisfaction. This study takes into account individual initiative and government’s control of information during Internet use, emphasizes the impact of different individual Internet use preferences on environmental satisfaction in the web environment with strong government control. By incorporating individual factors at the micro level and social factors at the macro level, this paper is in order to improve public environmental satisfaction.