The Impact of Institutional Trust and Environmental Attitudes on Preferences for Participation Method in Rural Household Waste Management

概要

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The Impact of Institutional Trust and
Environmental Attitudes on Preferences for
Participation Method in Rural Household Waste
Management
WANG, Yujie
College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F University

LU, Lanyue
College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F University

YABE, Mitsuyasu
Laboratory of Environmental Economics, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics,
Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University

YUAN, Yalin
College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F University

https://doi.org/10.5109/6796264
出版情報：九州大学大学院農学研究院紀要. 68 (2), pp.189-197, 2023-09. 九州大学大学院農学研究院
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J. Fac. Agr., Kyushu Univ., 68 (2), 189–197 (2023)

The Impact of Institutional Trust and Environmental Attitudes on Preferences for
Participation Method in Rural Household Waste Management
Yujie WANG1, Lanyue LU1, Mitsuyasu YABE and Yalin YUAN1*
Laboratory of Environmental Economics, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics,
Faculty of Agriculture, Kyushu University, 819–0395, Fukuoka, Japan
(Received May 9, 2023 and accepted May 18, 2023)
Household waste management is an important foundation for rural revitalization strategies. With the
in–depth advancement of rural revitalization strategies in China, improving the participation level of farmers
in household waste management has become a hot topic of social and policy attention. Using the survey
data of farmers in four counties and districts of Shaanxi Province, China, this study explores the mechanism
underlying the effect of institutional trust and environmental attitudes on the preferred method of rural
households to participate in household waste management. The results show that institutional trust significantly impacts farmers’ preference for payment–only and paying for work but has no significant impact on
their preference for labor–only. Environmental attitudes have significant effects on their choice of labor–
only, payment–only, and labor–and–payment. Therefore, the government must respect farmers’ preferred
methods to participate in rural household waste management, improve their institutional trust, and
strengthen publicity and education to guide farmers to actively participate in waste management.
Key words: rural domestic waste management, participation method, institutional trust, environmental attitude

activities, the rational measurement of trust benefits is
important in trusting subjects’ decisions about whether
to give trust (Li, 2020). Earlier studies show that the
expectations of the effects of environmental governance
directly or indirectly affect farmers’ institutional trust
and their willingness to participate (Nordlund and
Garvill, 2002). It has become a mainstream view in political and academic circles that institutional trust promotes farmers’ participation in environmental governance. However, research based on the behavioral economics paradigm suggests that institutional trust does
not promote farmers’ participation in environmental governance but can inhibit it. The theoretical community
has no consensus on whether institutional trust promotes participation.
As a self–sustaining improvement behavior, farmers’
participation in household waste management not only
requires continuous input from all levels of government,
but it must also be closely related to their environmental
attitudes (Han et al., 2016). Research shows that environmental attitudes, such as individuals’ tendencies in
thinking, acting, and believing about the environment,
can induce a change in farmers’ perceptions of environmental issues and promote their cooperative behavior in
environmental protection (Huang et al., 2017); whereas
individuals with more positive environmental attitudes
are more concerned about environmental issues (Wang
et al., 2020) and have a higher willingness to pay for
environmental behavior (Ye et al., 2021). Therefore,
weak environmental awareness and the lack of an ecological civilization concept will, to a certain extent,
inhibit farmers’ enthusiasm to participate in household
waste management and thus hinder the process of
improving rural habitat environments (Jia and Zhao,
2019). It is important to pay attention to the influence
of farmers’ environmental attitudes on their willingness

I N T RODUCTION
With the rapid development of rural society and the
economy and the continuous improvement of residents
living standards, the production of rural household waste
has increased sharply and has become the main source
of environmental pollution in rural areas (Cui and
Bluemling, 2018). In recent years, China’s No.1 Central
Document has continuously focused on rural household
waste management, and the General Office of the CPC
Central Committee, the Central Agricultural Office, and
other departments have issued successive documents
requiring the extensive mobilization of farmers to
actively participate in centralized special actions to rectify rural household waste pollution. However, due to
the strong externalities, regional nature, and public
property rights of rural household waste management,
there is inevitably insufficient public participation; moreover, it is difficult for the government’s supply method to
“target” demand (Liu and Guo, 2016; Wang et al., 2018).
The effective promotion of farmers’ participation in
household waste management has become key to
improving China’s rural habitat and is a crucial step in
promoting rural revitalization (Wei et al., 2011; Jiang and
Zhao, 2020).
Theoretically, farmers’ participation in environmental governance is an autonomous decision–making
behavior under a certain institutional framework, and
the implementation and effectiveness of institutional
policies related to rural environmental governance determine the degree of farmers’ trust in the system (Jia and
Zhao, 2019). As the psychological basis of cooperative
College of Economics and Management, Northwest A&F
University
* Corresponding Author (E–mail: ylyuan@nwafu.edu.cn)
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to participate in household waste management and its
mechanism of action.
The system designed for farmers’ participation in
environmental management only provides the institutional environment; however, whether farmers agree is
more important, as it directly influences the effectiveness of the system’s implementation. As a quasi–public
good, rural household waste management is currently
mainly supplied by the government and rural communities, with a few pilot villages in which farmers participate
by paying for it (Jia et al., 2019). Previous studies show
that at this stage, farmers are not highly motivated to
participate in household waste management by paying
for the services (Jia and Zhao, 2019; Zheng et al., 2019;
Liu and Wang, 2020). People are more willing to “pay”
for environmental services in the form of labor than to
pay for the service (Jin and Guo, 2011). In policy practice, the system of participation in household waste management has encountered resistance from many sides
because of the separation from the actual needs of rural
society and farmers. There are many problems such as
farmers’ low motivation to participate in household
waste management, difficulty in collecting household
waste management fees, and a low collection rate (Xu et
al., 2016; Yi, 2019). Given this, this study incorporates
institutional trust and environmental attitudes into a unified analytical framework and uses micro–survey data
from 592 sample farmers in Shaanxi Province to empirically analyze the factors influencing farmers’ preference
for participating in household waste management. A
multivariate disordered logit regression model is used to
provide an empirical basis for optimizing and improving
farmers’ participation in the rural household waste management system in China.
T H EOR ETICA L A NA LY TICA L F R A M EWORK
The trust–cooperation theory posits that trust is the
foundation and premise of cooperation, and its strength
determines the breadth and depth of individuals’ implementation of cooperative behavior (Li and Yang, 2018).
Institutional trust, as a kind of trust, refers to the public’s reasonable expectation that laws and regulations
and government agencies can achieve fair governance
(Wei et al., 2019). By establishing an internal constraint
mechanism, institutional trust can effectively regulate
and shape the order of rural society, thus effectively
inhibiting opportunistic behaviors such as “free–riding”
and avoiding the occurrence of phenomena such as the
“prisoner’s dilemma” (San and Sonia, 2013; Hartmann
and Herb, 2014). Domestic scholars generally believe
that institutional trust can be measured by farmers’ trust
in local government, laws and regulations, and village
cadres, and have verified through empirical studies that
there is a positive relationship between institutional
trust and behavioral intentions (He et al., 2015). From
the perspective of farmers’ trust in local government,
Zhang et al. (2021) verified that institutional trust can
effectively increase farmers’ willingness to invest and the
level of investment in household waste management.

Therefore, institutional trust plays an irreplaceable role
in promoting farmers’ participation in environmental
governance, i.e., the higher the degree of institutional
trust of farmers, the more optimistic they are about the
prospect of waste management, and the more motivated
they are to actively participate in household waste management.
Environmental attitudes are an important concept in
the field of environmental protection behavior research,
comprising a collection of emotions, beliefs, and behavioral intentions that individuals hold about environment–
related activities or issues (Schultz et al., 2004). It has
been shown that environmental attitudes can directly or
indirectly influence individuals’ environmental behaviors.
Huang et al. ...