Does ICT adoption promote more pro-environmental actions among Chinese?

Abstract

Environmental sustainability strongly depends on human behaviours. This study explores whether the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by Chinese people promotes their pro-environmental behaviours as measured by the number of pro-environmental actions. We employ an endogenous treatment Poisson regression model and analyse the data of 10,929 samples collected in the 2013 Chinese General Social Survey. The empirical results show that ICT adoption significantly increases the number of pro-environmental actions taken by the Chinese. Further analysis reveals that ICT adoption significantly increases the number of pro-environmental actions taken by urban and female people and those residing in the eastern and western China. Our findings highlight the importance of disseminating environmental sustainability information via ICTs to encourage people’s pro-environmental actions.