An Empirical Comparison of Environmental Behaviors in China’s Public and Private Sectors

The distinctive public–private sector segmentation in China provides a unique opportunity to assess the impacts of environmental education. Considering that the ideological education of ecological civilization has long been mandatorily enforced in the public sector, including government agencies and state-owned enterprises (SOEs), ahead of the private sector, this research centers on the question of whether environmental behaviors are influenced by sector affiliation in China. We carried out an empirical comparison using data from the 2013 version of the Chinese General Social Survey. The results showed that public sector and state-owned enterprise affiliations were both positive predictors of environmental behaviors. However, private environmental behaviors were weak in SOEs and environmental knowledge had an insufficient impact on public environmental practices. These findings suggest that a more efficacious environmental education system is needed in public sectors as well as for the general public.