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Xu, Z.; Zhao, J.; Li, S., and Shan, J., 2023. Investigating resident participation in pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) for marine protection in coastal China. Journal of Coastal Research, 39(3), 455–470. Charlotte (North Carolina), ISSN 0749-0208. Marine environments are currently faced with unprecedented challenges of marine pollution and ecological destruction in China. A good marine environment is inseparable from individual's pro-environmental behaviors. This study investigates residents' willingness to perform four types of pro-environmental behaviors in marine environmental protection in Qingdao, China. The results indicate that most respondents express a strong willingness to protect marine environment. However, a remarkable discrepancy in residents' preference for different pro-environmental behaviors is observed. Residents hold the strongest participation willingness and the most positive attitudes towards the recycling behaviors. Additionally, this study identifies the determinants of residents' pro-environmental behaviors from the perspective of cultural belief, and focuses on the influences of Chinese pastoral and bureaucratic culture. The findings confirm that cultural belief cannot exert influences on pro-environmental behaviors directly; however, can prompt an individual's pro-environmental behaviors through self-identity, perceived responsibility, and attitudes. This study has important implications for policymakers to take measures to boost the public participation in marine environmental protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak took a heavy toll on the global tourism industry in 2020, and affected the value realization of coastal recreational ecosystem service. From the micro perspective, this paper combines travel cost method with contingent behaviour method to obtain residents' actual behaviour and contingent behaviour data, and discusses the impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 on the value realization of coastal recreational resources from the perspective of the change in residents' recreational behaviour in Qingdao, China. Residents are observed to significantly reduce their outdoor activities in response to the COVID-19. The number of visits to the beach decreases by 25.2% when there is an outbreak, and decreases by 0.064% for every 1% increase in the number of confirmed cases, which is used to represent the severity of the epidemic. The asymmetries effects of epidemic situation on residents' recreational behaviour show that the improvements lead to larger and more significant impacts than the deteriorations. The disappearance of the pandemic crisis will provide considerable welfare for the citizens in Qingdao, which reaches to 1.9323 billion CNY/year. If the number of confirmed cases deteriorates to 900, the environmental welfare loss will be 0.3366 billion CNY/year. Additionally, we test the effects of residents' cognitive variables, and find that risk perception can strengthen the negative impacts of COVID-19 cases. Furthermore, the deteriorations in the environmental attributes are found to have stronger impacts on the number of visits than the improvements. This paper provides empirical-support results about the change of coastal recreational value through the evaluation of recreational behaviours in the post-epidemic period, which will give important implications for government's marine ecosystem restoration and coastal management work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green tides, which cause serious harm to the marine ecological environment, have become a serious and recurrent environmental event in China. This paper investigates the residents' willingness to pay for the governance of green tides. The results show that residents' willingness to pay (WTP) for the complete disappearance of green tides and the restoration of coastal environment to the state before green tides reaches 68.59 CNY/a (US $ 9.85) on average. Additionally, the study uses self-identity and information concern to reflect the differences of residents' intrinsic characteristics and the onslaught of the extrinsic information to empirically analyze the sources of the preference differentials. Risk perception, moral norms, and self-efficacy are further introduced to observe the influence mechanism. The results indicate that moral norms are the most important factors affecting the WTP, and a direct relationship between information concern and residents' WTP is observed. Self-identity does not show a direct impact on residents' preference, however, has an indirect influence through moral norms and self-efficacy. This paper helps to increase individual pro-environmental behaviors and provides references for the management of green tides. • Green tides cause serious harm to the marine ecological environment. • Investigates WTP of residents with different socioeconomic characteristics. • Considers value evaluation from actual management measures adopted by government. • Empirically analyzes the sources of differentials of residents' WTP. • Provides references for the public participation in the management of green tides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulva (U.) prolifera bloom has huge negative impacts on the economy and the environment, has been an important marine environmental problem in China. The study applies contingent valuation method to investigate public preferences for the management of U. prolifera bloom. The results show that the median of residents' willingness to pay (WTP) are 40 CNY/a for the scenario that U. prolifera bloom would disappear completely in the Yellow Sea coastal area around Qingdao, and the median of WTP are the same (22.5 CNY/a) for the three scenarios that focused on the cover area, duration times, and offshore distance of U. prolifera bloom, respectively. Additionally, this paper explores whether the belief, which respondents believe that their response will be taken into consideration by the government, contributes to revealing their preferences truthfully. The results show that most respondents believe that their response is consequential in policy and payment outcomes. The belief in policy and payment consequentiality are largely positively correlated, and show a similar influence on the willingness to pay. This study provides important implications on the economic assessment of the damages caused by U. prolifera bloom, and agrees on the importance of consequentiality, but does not provide the support for separately addressing policy and payment consequentiality in the contingent valuation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]