The purpose of this study is to determine whether there are gender differences in people’s pro-environmental psychology and behaviors in China. An online survey was conducted with the snowball sampling technique, and a sample of 532 Chinese respondents was obtained for the research. This study finds that gender does affect green psychology and behaviors, with females reporting a higher level of environmentalism in China. Specifically, females are more concerned with environmental problems, more supportive of plastic ban policies, more positive towards reducing plastics (reduce), and have stronger intention to bring a reusable bag for shopping (reuse and recycle). Moreover, females use fewer disposable toiletries when checking in a hotel and require less disposable tableware when ordering takeout. This study contributes to the current literature by identifying the relationship between gender and environmentalism in China. Implications for anti-plastic policy design and environmental management are also presented.

Bringing a reusable bag for shopping is a typical pro-environmental behavior and has been shown to be effective in reducing plastics, but research regarding this green behavior is limited. In this regard, using the snowball sampling technique, this study conducts a survey on a sample of 361 Chinese consumers to investigate their intention to bring a reusable bag for shopping based on the theory of planned behavior. To increase the explaining power for behavioral intention, this study extended the TPB by adding two additional variables: locus of control and environmental concern. Data was analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique. Results show that attitude, perceived behavioral control, and subjective norm exert significant and positive influence on consumers’ intention to bring reusable bags for shopping, and the perceived behavioral control exerts the greatest influence, followed by attitude and subjective norm. Both locus of control and environmental concern fail to directly impact consumers’ bringing intention, but they could impact consumers’ intention indirectly. Specifically, the external locus of control exerts a negative influence on attitude and perceived behavioral control. Environmental concern positively impacts consumers’ attitudes towards bringing reusable bags for shopping. Results of this study could provide valuable insights into plastics management and policy design to promote consumers’ green shopping behaviors. For instance, the finding that perceived behavioral control is the greatest contributor to consumers’ intention to bring reusable bags highlights the importance of clearing reusable bag preparation and use barriers.

Water conservation represents a typical green behavior and a sustainable lifestyle. Understanding residents’ water conservation behaviors is a prerequisite for promoting more water savers. Using the snowball sampling technique, this study conducted a survey on a sample of 532 Chinese residents to investigate their water conservation behavior, i.e., reusing water in daily life. This study aims for examining psychological and knowledge factors on residents’ water conservation behavior in China using binary logistic regression. Results show that over half of the respondents (54%) have the habit of reusing water in their daily lives. Residents with stronger environmental concern and higher level of environmental knowledge are more likely to exhibit household water conservation in China. Additionally, environmental knowledge plays a positive moderating role in the relationship between environmental concern and water conservation behavior. Environmental knowledge serves as a catalyzer that facilitates the transformation from residents’ environmental concern into real water conservation behavior. Among the demographic variables, only income exerts significantly negative effect on residents’ water conservation behavior, and other variables (e.g., age and gender) fail to exert any influence on this behavior. This study contributes to the literature on environmental psychology and concludes with implications for water resource management.

Municipal household solid waste (MHSW) has become a serious problem in China over the course of the last two decades, resulting in significant side effects to the environment. Therefore, effective management of MHSW has attracted wide attention from both researchers and practitioners. Separate collection, the first and crucial step to solve the MHSW problem, however, has not been thoroughly studied to date. An empirical survey has been conducted among 387 households in Harbin, China in this study. We use Bayesian Belief Networks model to determine the influencing factors on separate collection. Four types of factors are identified, including political, economic, social cultural and technological based on the PEST (political, economic, social and technological) analytical method. In addition, we further analyze the influential power of different factors, based on the network structure and probability changes obtained by Netica software. Results indicate that technological dimension has the greatest impact on MHSW separate collection, followed by the political dimension and economic dimension; social cultural dimension impacts MHSW the least.

This study selects three cities in China that implement plastic bag ban policies with different levels of consumer involvement to compare the effects of policy implementation. In general, consumer plastic bag usage behaviour becomes more environmentally friendly when plastic bag ban policies became more stringent. High consumer involvement policies induces changes in pro-environmental bag use; however, their plastic-reducing effects are uncertain and compounded. In contrast, low-consumer-involvement policies could reduce plastic waste damage but could not make consumers’ more environmentally conscious with regard to bag usage. Moreover, this study confirms robust bag usage differences across different groups of consumers. These findings provide valuable insights into the patterns of influence of different types of plastic bag bans. Based on these insights, plastic crisis managers can create more effective and targeted policies to combat the growing plastic crisis.