The influence of psychological cognition and policy environment on the basin residents' behavior of ecological compensation under the background of carbon neutrality: A case study in upper Yellow River basin, China.

• The paper analyzes the impact of psychological characteristics and policy environment on public participation. • The paper expands the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and adds policy variables to the TBP model. • The paper provides a research perspective of management science and psychology for ecological compensation research. • Psychological cognition can significantly improve the public's willingness to participate. • The influence of policy environment on public behavior is far greater than that on their will. Public participation in river basin ecological compensation is one of the effective means to adjust the multi stakeholder relationship and promote low-carbon development. This paper takes the upper Yellow River basin section as the research area, adds ecological compensation policy variables to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). An integrated theoretical framework is established from the two levels of personal psychological cognition and policy environment, which can comprehensively consider multiple factors that affect individual behavior. This paper uses the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to empirically analyze the impact of psychological factors and river basin ecological compensation policy on the public's willingness and behavior to participate in river basin ecological compensation. The results showed that the three psychological cognitive factors of behavior attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavior control had a significant impact on the public's willingness to participate in ecological compensation. The ecological compensation policy also has a significant impact on the willingness and behavior of the public to participate in ecological compensation. The impact coefficient of ecological compensation policy on the participation willingness is 0.085, and the impact coefficient on the participation behavior is 0.551. The existing ecological compensation policies in carbon neutral contexts have a stronger effect on the public participation behavior, but a weaker impact on the public's willingness to participate. The existing policies in carbon neutral contexts play a small role in mobilizing the public's enthusiasm from the psychological cognitive level, but the willingness to participate has a significant direct impact on the participation behavior. The research conclusions of this paper can help to broaden the theoretical framework of public participation and provide new ideas and methods for improving the ecological compensation mechanism of the river basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]