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

4. Regression results 4.1. Benchmark results We first examine the relationship between educational attainment and pro-environmental atti- tudes and behaviors by estimating Eq (1) using OLS models. Table 3 presents the regression results. Columns (1) and (2) report the estimated coefficients on pro-environmental attitudes, while columns (3) to (4) report the estimated coefficients on pro-environmental behaviors. As explained above, each model includes a constant, cohort fixed effects, and city dummies, the coefficients of which are not reported for brevity. At the bottom of the table, we report the number of observations and adjusted R-squared. When no control variables are included in columns (1) and (3), we find that education has a significantly positive coefficient estimate. As expected, the estimate of education is still positive and significant at the 1% level when we con- trol for a set of background characteristics in columns (2) and (4), suggesting that more edu- cated individuals are more environmentally friendly. Inspecting the control variables yields some interesting observations. Rural residents dis- play less pro-environmental behaviors than people in urban areas. This is probably because urban residents have more opportunities to perceive the importance of environmental issues, such as the information from media publicity, and therefore have higher incentives to conduct pro-environmental behaviors. To solve the potential endogeneity problem, we also perform an instrumental variable anal-

ysis. As shown in Table 4, the coefficients on the instrumental variable, CSL, in the first-stage regression are positive and highly significant. This is consistent with our expectation that Table 3. The effects of education on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, baseline results. Pro-environmental attitudes Pro-environmental behaviors (1) (2) (3) (4) Education 0.009��� 0.008��� 0.011��� 0.008��� (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) (0.001) Male 0.005 -0.001 (0.008) (0.005) Married 0.009 0.011 (0.009) (0.008) Income 0.001 0.001 (0.001) (0.001) Employed -0.008 -0.010 (0.007) (0.007) Han nationality -0.058 -0.017 (0.022) (0.016) Rural -0.012 -0.063��� (0.011) (0.010) Cohort FE Yes Yes Yes Yes City FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 3,458 3,456 3,664 3,661 R-Square 0.177 0.194 0.301 0.316 Note: The table reports the estimates from OLS regressions of education on pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors. Columns (1)-(2) report the results for pro- environmental attitudes, while columns (3)-(4) report the results for pro-environmental behaviors. All regressions include a constant term, cohort fixed effects, and city dummies, but their coefficients are suppressed for brevity. Robust standard errors are clustered at the cohort-city level and are reported in parentheses. ���, �� and � indicate 1%, 5% and 10% significance levels, respectively. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263383.t003 PLOS ONE Green returns to education PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0263383 February 3, 2022 11 / 20