The influence of internet use on residents’ ecological conservation behaviors: Evidence from Taibai Mountain Nature Reserve, China

Abstract

Nature reserve management involves a complex issue of insufficient resident participation, which can be resolved with context-based interventions. As a potentially effective intervention to engage community members in environmental protection in the digital era, however, whether and how the internet could play an encouraging role remains unclear. To this end, this paper developed a moderated mediation model to test the relationship between internet use and ecological conservation behaviors, considering perceptions as a potential mediator and environmental regulation as a potential moderator based on 494 samples collected from a household survey. The statistical population were residents in Taibai Mountain Nature Reserve, China, all of whom were selected by stratified random sampling with proportionate assignment. Structural equation modeling and bootstrapping estimation were adopted to analyze the data. The findings indicated that (1) internet use was positively related to ecological conservation behaviors, perceived benefits and perceived value of nature reserves, but negatively related to perceived risks of nature reserves; (2) internet use could exert positive influence on ecological conservation behaviors via perceptions; (3) environmental regulation played a moderating role in the association between internet use, perceptions and ecological conservation behaviors. The findings provide policymakers with practical suggestions about how to exert a more lasting and positive effects on residents’ ecological conservation behaviors by intervening in the psychological processes driving ecological conservation behaviors through integrated application of the internet and environmental regulation.

Keywords

• Ecological conservation behaviors
• Internet use
• Perceptions
• Environmental regulation
• Nature reserve