In China, winning the battle for blue skies is a focal point of the central government’s environmental governance efforts. Public evaluations provide validity and legitimacy to the Chinese government’s top-level design for environmental governance. This study utilizes data from two waves of the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) conducted in 2013 and 2021, paired with objective air quality data, to conduct a longitudinal analysis of public evaluation of central government environmental governance in China. Furthermore, it explores the relationships between perceived air pollution, objective air quality, environmental knowledge, and public assessment of central government environmental performance. The findings indicate the following: (1) Over the past decade, there has been a noticeable improvement in air quality in China, leading to a significant enhancement in public perception of the central government’s environmental performance. (2) Subjective perceptions of air pollution have a significant negative impact on evaluations of the central government, whereas objective environmental governance measures do not exhibit significant effects. (3) Environmental knowledge plays a negative moderating role in the relationship between perceived air pollution and public assessment of central government environmental performance; individuals with higher levels of environmental knowledge tend to express greater dissatisfaction with the central government’s environmental performance upon perceiving air pollution. These research findings offer valuable insights for informing the formulation of environmental governance policies by the central government of China and provide lessons for other developing and highly polluting countries.

Introduction: Most studies on smoking in China operationalize tobacco use as a binary exposure, obscuring clinically meaningful heterogeneity in dependence intensity. Despite China’s status as the world’s largest tobacco consumer, limited research has examined gradients in tobacco...

Introduction: China's urban community waste management (UCWM) is plagued by severe environmental pollution, resource wastage, and insufficient public participation, necessitating an urgent shift towards sustainable practices through grassroots mobilization. This study explores how urban communities can integrate external resources and endogenous dynamics to form sustainable waste management orders, guided by the Neo Endogenous Development (NED) theory.Methods: This study collected data using the interview method and analyzed the data through NVIVO 12.0 to explore the integration of external resources and internal dynamics in forming sustainable UCWM orders in two representative Chinese urban communities in Beijing and Shanghai.Results: The findings reveal that technology, as an exogenous force, effectively stimulates endogenous sustainable development by aggregating subjects through platform empowerment, activating grassroots resources via data interoperability, and fostering social connections and environmental awareness. The NED framework, which integrates technology empowerment, multi-stakeholder collaboration, resource activation, and value creation, demonstrates significant potential in enhancing sustainable waste management.Discussion: These results highlight the synergistic role of technological innovation, stakeholder collaboration, and community empowerment in achieving sustainable waste management. The study underscores the replicability of NED-based waste management models in diverse socio-economic settings. Practical policy recommendations include increased government subsidies for smart devices, legislation for waste sorting responsibilities, and technology adoption tailored to community needs.