Green returns to education: Does education affect pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in China?

RESEARCH ARTICLE Green returns to education: Does education affect pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in China? Qi Wang1, Geng Niu2, Xu GanID3*, Qiaoling Cai2 1 Business School, Sichuan University, Chengdu, Sichuan, P.R. China, 2 Research Institute of Economics and Management, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, Sichuan, P.R. China, 3 School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, P.R. China * xgan@hust.edu.cn Abstract Using microdata from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS 2010), this paper investi- gates whether there are green returns to education in China, where educational attainment promotes pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. We establish causality by exploiting the exogenous variation induced by the implementation of the Compulsory Schooling Law (CSL) in China. We find evidence that educational attainment is associated with higher lev- els of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, and these estimates are robust to various robustness checks. Further analysis reveals that the acquisition of environmental knowl- edge is the channel that drives the effect of education on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Finally, the effects of education are heterogeneous across individuals. 1. Introduction China faces severe environmental problems such as air pollution, depletion of resources, extreme weather events and food contaminations in recent years [1–3]. Environmental prob- lems not only significantly increase the morbidity and mortality rates of various diseases but

also generate a heavy medical burden and large disutility [4]. The health loss erodes average life expectancy and human-capital accumulation, thereby jeopardizing economic development [5]. These environmental problems are, at least partly, rooted in human behavior [6,7], and can thus be mitigated by changing the relevant behaviors so as to improve environmental qual- ity. Therefore, understanding the determinants of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors is of high academic and policy relevance in China. Nevertheless, the research in this direction is still in its infancy. Most of the existing studies have focused on the harmful effects of pollu- tions produced by firm-level manufacturing activity in China [8]. In fact, an important part of the environmental contamination comes from the daily practices of the households, which has not received sufficient scholarly attention [9]. This paper undertakes an in-depth examination of the role that education plays in affecting individual pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in China. The association between edu- cation and many positive economic, social and health outcomes is well documented in the PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263383 February 3, 2022 1 / 20 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Wang Q, Niu G, Gan X, Cai Q (2022) Green returns to education: Does education affect pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors in China? PLoS ONE 17(2): e0263383. https://doi. org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263383 Editor: Shihe Fu, Xiamen University, CHINA

Received: April 28, 2021 Accepted: January 18, 2022 Published: February 3, 2022 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263383 Copyright: © 2022 Wang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: Data cannot be shared publicly because it is owned by a third party and authors do not have permission to share the data. Data are available from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) database (contact via http:// cgss.ruc.edu.cn/English/Home.htm) for