How Does Government Information Service Quality Influence Public Environmental Awareness?

The development of public environmental awareness has been an essential part of environmental governance in China and a prerequisite for the emergence of conscious environmental behaviors. However, the deeper factors influencing Chinese public environmental awareness are not yet fully understood. In this study, the perception of environmental pollution and the sense of political efficacy were introduced as variables to establish a public environmental awareness model, at the perception level, from the perspective of government information service quality. The correlations between different variables, as well as the working principles, were analyzed based on national environmental survey data. The results demonstrate that both external (the government information service quality) and psychological (the perception of environmental pollution and the sense of political efficacy) factors have significant positive influences on public environmental awareness, with the sense of political efficacy outperforming the perception of environmental pollution and the government information service quality. Analysis of the mediating effect reveals that government information service quality directly influences public environmental awareness; it also indirectly influences public environmental awareness through a chained mediating effect of the perception of environmental pollution and the sense of political efficacy. The results of the multiple-group analysis, with gender and urban–rural attributes as moderator variables, further show that, compared with men and urban residents, the impact of government information service quality and environmental pollution perception on women and rural people’s political efficacy is not significant. Therefore, it is suggested to optimize the government information service, improve the public’s perception of environmental pollution, and then promote the public’s sense of efficacy in the environment governance situation. Furthermore, the government should formulate differentiated strategies for different types of public to guide them to form a proactive awareness of environmental protection.