HOW SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECTS PM2.5 LEVELS IN URBAN CHINA?

ABSTRACT

Chinese people are increasingly using social media to express their concerns regarding pollution, especially when confronted with thick haze. This study aims to explore the effects of public pressure reflected by social media on urban PM2.5 levels and the mechanism underlying the relationship. The results of spatial regression models confirm the positive effect of public pressure as reflected by social media on reducing PM2.5 levels, indicating that public pressure has emerged as an important factor in environmental governance. Cities at higher hierarchy levels and cities with greater innovative capacity are more responsive to public pressure to reduce PM2.5 levels, while financial burdens impede the effect of public pressure on air-quality improvement. This study sheds light on the significance of citizens’ awareness of the environment on environmental governance in developing countries like China, indicating that public pressure through environment-related posts on social media has emerged as an essential power in environmental governance. Keywords: social media, public pressure, PM2.5, pollution, environment, China.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Yang Zhao in obtaining Weibo data.

Notes

¹ We also tried other distance bandwidths, with roughly the same results.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2020ECNU), the Key Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China (19AZD007), the US National Science Foundation (1759746), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41430637).