Mixed evidence exists regarding the relationship between environmental risk perception and pro-environmental behavior. This study uses an existing online survey conducted by the Center of Ecological Civilization (CEC) of China University of Geosciences from December 2015 to March 2016 and examines how cultural bias influences environmental risk perception and behavior. We found that an individual’s pro-environmental behavior is not only influenced by environmental risk perception, but also by his or her cultural worldviews. Built on culture theory (CT), our empirical results suggest that young Chinese people are more located in “high-group” culture, where egalitarian culture and hierarchical culture dominate. The higher scores of hierarchical and egalitarian cultures of Chinese youth, the more likely they are to protect the environment. Moreover, the relationship between cultural worldviews and pro-environmental behaviors are mediated by perceived environmental risks.

How do cultural biases, trust in government, and perceptions of risk and protective actions influence compliance with regulation of COVID-19? Analyzing Chinese (n = 646) and American public opinion samples (n = 1,325) from spring 2020, we use Grid–Group Cultural Theory and the Protective Action Decision Model to specify, respectively, cultural influences on public risk perceptions and decision-making regarding protective actions. We find that cultural biases mostly affect protective actions indirectly through public perceptions. Regardless of country, hierarchical cultural biases increase protective behaviors via positive perceptions of protective actions. However, other indirect effects of cultural bias via public perceptions vary across both protective actions and countries. Moreover, trust in government only mediates the effect of cultural bias in China and risk perception only mediates the effect of cultural bias in the United States. Our findings suggest that regulators in both countries should craft regulations that are congenial to culturally diverse populations.

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 .