Investigating the intention to participate in environmental governance during urban-rural integrated development process in the Yangtze River Delta Region

Urban-rural integrated development has been widely conducted in China, and plenty of resource consumption and environmental problems have arisen during this process. Meanwhile, the importance of environmental governance has been emphasized in social collaborative governance. Although existing studies have focused on the governance policies on urban and rural development, the residents’ participation willingness toward collaborative governance should not be neglected, especially in environmental governance. Accordingly, this study identified the determinants influencing the participation intention toward the collaborative environmental governance of residents in the Yangtze River Delta Region by a combined theoretical model, which added three decisive predictors from the theory of planned behavior to the norm-activation model. We collected 312 valid questionnaires and employed structural equation modeling for analysis. Results implied that, in order of significance, personal norm, behavioral attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control presented positive influences on behavioral intention. Personal norm was significantly underlain by awareness of consequence and ascription of responsibility, and the significant influence of awareness of consequence on behavioral intention was not demonstrated. This study proposes related managerial implications to improve public participation willingness regarding collaborative environmental governance during urban-rural integrated development processes in the Yangtze River Delta Region.