The Difference of Internet Use on Environmental Protection Behavior Willingness of Urban and Rural Residents in China

Based on the data of Chinese General Social Survey, this study examines the net impact of Internet use on environmental protection behavior willingness in China by building a propensity score matching model and adopting the K-order nearest neighbor matching strategy (1:4), and investigates the differences between urban and rural areas. On this basis, this study also builds the RIF mean regression decomposition model to investigate the impact of Internet use on the gap of environmental protection behavior willingness between urban and rural in China. It is found that although Internet use can significantly improve the environmental protection behavior willingness in China, there are obvious differences between urban and rural areas. Specifically, the frequent use of the Internet can significantly improve the environmental protection behavior willingness of urban residents in China by 19.73%, but it has no significant impact on the environmental protection behavior willingness of rural residents in China. After decomposing the environmental protection behavior willingness gap between urban and rural residents, it is found that Internet use not only significantly expands the environmental protection behavior willingness gap between urban and rural residents in China by 32.69% by producing a characteristic gap effect, but also significantly expands the environmental protection behavior willingness gap between urban and rural residents in China by 91.04% by producing a coefficient gap.