Who Benefits Most from the Web? Heterogeneous Effects of the Internet Access on Environmental Knowledge.

The current research aims to investigate heterogeneous effects of the Internet access on environmental knowledge across members of the Chinese population. Based on a nation-wide survey in China, we employ the propensity score approach to address the selection bias and to estimate heterogeneous treatment effects. Our analyses reveal robustly significant positive associations between Internet access and environmental knowledge. More importantly, the study shows that individuals who are least likely to access to the Internet benefit the most from cyberspace, indicating a positive outlook on the potential of the Internet to narrow or reduce the environmental knowledge gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]