Environmental awareness and conscious consumption among students of the University of Shenzhen, China : a case study with a mixed-method approach : survey results compared with different studies, multiple regression ana

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E N V I R O N M E N TA L AWA R E N E S S A N D C O N S C I O U S

C O N S U M P T I O N A M O N G S T U D E N T S O F T H E

U N I V E R S I T Y O F S H E N Z H E N , C H I N A

A case study with a mixed-method approach: survey results compared with

different studies, multiple regression analyses and a qualitative aspect in the

form of open survey questions and in-depth interviews

Aimée van Ham

Master Thesis Human Geography

Track: Environmental Geography

University of Amsterdam

Supervisor

dr. M.A. Bontje

Co-supervisor

C.W. Yang MSc

Second reader

dr. M.A. Hordijk

21st August 2017

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A B S T R AC T

In this paper a research is completed to provide a better understanding of the environmental awareness and conscious consumption patterns among students of the University of Shenzhen. A mixed method ap-proach is adopted, using both quantitative data (comparison with other studies and multiple regressions) and qualitative data (open survey questions and interviews) to answer the following main question:

To what extent is the environmental awareness among students in Shenzhen developed and in what ways does this influence their environ-mentally conscious consumption patterns?

The results show that certain variables do have an impact on en-vironmentally conscious consumption patterns and together with the results of the open questions in the survey and the in- depth inter-views a deeper understanding and explanation of these consumption patterns is sought.

Public engagement in the environment is important for sustainabil-ity and environmental improvement and so the results of this research can show to what extent students in Shenzhen are engaged and can make a difference now and in the future, as they are the future.

The results of this study show that environmental awareness exists among students in Shenzhen and that they have some general concerns about the problem. The model shows though that it is hard to predict conscious consumption patterns with environmental awareness. Prob-ably because the concept is quite difficult and people’s behaviour is often irrational. However together with the open survey questions and the in-depth interviews a sufficient image of the behaviour is given.

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AC K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I would like to start by thanking my supervisor Marco Bontje and co-reader Ching Wen Yang for their help and advice during the writing process of this research.

A note of thankfulness to my family for their support and sugges-tions. Especially I would like to express my gratitude to my brother as he gave this research a wonderful final touch.

Of course I want to thank the ’translators’ who helped me on my first days around the university campus and because they translated the survey and some of the results as well. Also I want to acknowledge the stakeholders that were interviewed and the respondents who took the time to fill in the survey.

My fellow students made the weeks in Shenzhen unforgettable and I’m grateful for this; their questions and suggestions during the research and after this time were very helpful.

Lastly I would you like to thank you, the reader, for taking an interest in my research. I hope you will find the results of this study valuable.

Aimée van Ham

Amsterdam, 21st August 2017

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“The motivation should come from regulatory enforce-ment, but enforcement is weak, and environmental litigation is near to impossible. So there is an urgent need for extensive public participation to generate another kind of motivation.” Ma Jun

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C O N T E N T S

1 introduction 1

2 theoretical background 5

2.1 Environmental footprint and green development . . . 5

2.2 Environmental awareness and conscious consumption 9 2.3 Shenzhen . . . 11

2.4 Conclusion . . . 13

3 research 15 3.1 Research field and group . . . 15

3.2 Conceptual model . . . 16

3.3 Sub questions . . . 17

4 research method 19 4.1 Explanation of the survey . . . 19

4.2 In-depth interviews . . . 22

4.3 Research method scheme . . . 23

4.4 Limitations . . . 23

5 sub question 1 27 5.1 Distributional table . . . 27

5.2 Dependent variables . . . 36

5.2.1 Environmentally conscious consumption . . . 36

5.2.2 Comparison with other studies . . . 37

5.3 Independent variables . . . 40

5.3.1 Personal data . . . 40

5.3.2 Environmental education . . . 40

5.3.3 Environmental knowledge . . . 41

5.3.4 Environmental concerns . . . 42

5.3.5 Environmental problem areas . . . 44

5.3.6 Environmental statements . . . 48 5.3.7 Environmental awareness . . . 50 5.3.8 Open questions . . . 50 5.4 Conclusion . . . 52 6 sub question 2 53 6.1 Regression analyses . . . 53 6.1.1 Regression 1 . . . 53 6.1.2 Regression 2 . . . 57 ix

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6.1.3 Regression 3 . . . 58

6.1.4 Regression 4 . . . 58

6.1.5 Regression 5 . . . 59

6.2 Regressions with derived dependent variable . . . 60

6.2.1 Regression 7 . . . 60 6.2.2 Regression 8 . . . 61 6.2.3 Regression 9 . . . 61 6.3 Conclusion . . . 62 7 sub question 3 65 7.1 Interviews . . . 65

7.1.1 Professor Liu and some students . . . 65

7.1.2 Carissa Welton . . . 66

7.1.3 Tammy . . . 68

7.1.4 Huabo Duan . . . 68

7.2 Open questions surveys . . . 69

7.2.1 In what ways do friends/family influence your conscious consumption patterns? . . . 72

7.2.2 In what ways does Shenzhen influence your conscious consumption patterns? . . . 75

7.2.3 In what ways does the university influence your conscious consumption patterns? . . . . 78

7.3 Conclusion . . . 81

8 conclusion and discussion 85 8.1 Conclusion . . . 85

8.2 Recommendations for further research . . . 87

8.3 Reflection . . . 89

bibliography 89

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L I S T O F F I G U R E S

Figure 2.1 Ecological footprint of countries in Global

hectares/capita, 2013 . . . 6

Figure 2.2 Ecological footprint of countries in Global hectares, 2013 . . . 6

Figure 2.3 A side effect of the fast implementation of the bikes in Shenzhen . . . 8

Figure 3.1 The conceptual model that shows the inter-relations of the variables . . . 17

Figure 4.1 Research method scheme that shows the taken steps during the fieldwork and research . . . 24

Figure 5.1 Local children in Futian in the “Shenhzen life-style” . . . 39 Figure 6.1 Regression 1 . . . 54 Figure 6.2 Regression 2 . . . 57 Figure 6.3 Regression 3 . . . 58 Figure 6.4 Regression 4 . . . 59 Figure 6.5 Regression 5 . . . 60 Figure 6.6 Regression 6 . . . 60 Figure 6.7 Regression 7 . . . 61 Figure 6.8 Regression 8 . . . 62 Figure 6.9 Regression 9 . . . 62

Figure 7.1 The children parading through the city wear-ing garbage . . . 67

Figure 7.2 Shenzhen is a modern city with Western food chains. . . 77

Figure 7.3 The assigned bins where students can throw away their old clothes. . . 83

L I S T O F TA B L E S Table 5.1 Distributional table of the individual data and environmental education . . . 28

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Table 5.2 Distributional table of the environmental know-ledge . . . 29

Table 5.3 Distributional table of the environmental

con-cerns . . . 30

prob-lem areas . . . 31

Table 5.5 Distributional table of the top 5 of the

prior-itization of the environmental problem areas 32

state-ments . . . 33

Table 5.7 Distributional table of the variables that are

combined the environmental awareness and the transformation of the open survey questions 34

Table 5.8 Distributional table . . . 35

Table 5.9 Top 5 . . . 46

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1

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Asia — and in particular for this research China — has developed massively and this growth will only continue. A consequence of this growth is an larger pressure on the environment as an increasing wealth, consumption and population growth will enlarge the pres-sure on the environment (Wu and Gaubatz, 2013). According to the Kuznets curve a country’s environmental pressure will increase with economic growth but if a country is developed this will reach a tipping point and then the environmental pressure will decrease. If a country developed to an economically strong phase there is more emphasis on the necessity of sustainability (Dinda, 2004). China faces and will face many challenges of which one is an environmental challenge and even though the country is still developing, it is trying to combine this with a sustainable growth as well (to what extent this is really sincerely interpreted is questionable). The Chinese government is aware to some extent that sustainable improvement and investment is necessary but the problem is now mostly solved from a top down method. The role of the public and citizens is often overlooked in policy making, even though this can truly contribute and this is also necessary for a faster environmental development (Chan et al., 2013).

This is why the focus of this research is on the public environmental awareness to see to what extent this is developed and if this has an effect on conscious consumption patterns and so theoretically what this can contribute on a larger scale on the pace of environmental development in China. If the awareness is high this will probably have an effect on their behaviour and this will have a positive contribution on the environmental transition of a country. This study uses quite a bottom up approach because it’s about citizens involvement and what the effects of their awareness will be on their behaviour. The results are based on extensive surveys with students. This is supplemented with literature on public engagement and environmental awareness. Also some open questions were added in the survey and in depth interviews were done to make the research not only quantitative but also qualitative. The survey is inspired by other studies and the

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results are compared with these studies, which gives this research a comparative component as well.

Shenzhen is an interesting city for this study because of its — in a way — deviant characters in comparison to other Chinese cities: the city is relatively new (since 1980 the population expanded to 20 million of which 80 percent are migrants), has one of the highest development and growth rates and it is one of the most wealthy cities in China. Also it has a different type of economy that is making the transformation to a more progressive multi-dimensional one: the city is developing it’s economy from a more producing labour intensive one to a precursor in China of technical innovation and service based jobs (Bontje, 2014). Shenzhen is a Chinese city with one of the highest levels of highly educated people and the city is trying to incorporate environmental developments in the planning of the city as well (Liu et al., 2016).

Based on these developments and characteristic it would be inter-esting to find out the position of a high educated young student in this transition. Probably this economic transformation will only develop more overtime and thus students were chosen as well as they will grow more into this development. They are young now and if their behaviour is different or will change overtime this will have a bigger impact on the long term than the change of older people (as they already live for some time). The main research question for this study is the following:

This research could contribute to a better understanding of the consumption patterns and environmental awareness among students and thus reflect on the role of the public in the environmental problems. For this research students were chosen because they are the future generations of China and their consumption, awareness and attitudes will define the environmental development of China.

From an academic and social perspective a research on behaviour and environmental awareness and if this in any way changes the consumption patterns could add value to the current debate on the influence of China on the environment. A lot of literature is on envir-onmental awareness and behaviour but there is no literature that uses a (regression) model to explain environmentally conscious consumption patterns with this environmental awareness and other variables. The addition of this study therefore is to first see how the environmental awareness and consumption patterns among students in Shenzhen are and secondly to investigate if there is an interaction and so if it is possible to capture this behaviour in a model. Also this study uses not

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introduction 3

only a quantitative approach but also seeks a qualitative approach as it uses open interview questions and in depth interviews.

Of course it is hard to generalize the results of the research to a bigger scale, because it’s a case study. To prevent giving a one sided explanation different methods were used; a comparative, a quantitative and a qualitative. Sometimes a (possible) explanation for the results is given, but further research is needed to investigate the causes of the differences and what the implications of these differences could be.

In this research first a theoretical framework is given that discusses the environmental footprint of different countries including China and to what extent China has a green development. After this the results of literature related to environmental awareness and conscious consumption is shown, followed by a sub chapter on Shenzhen. Then an extensive research method follows, including an explanation of the concepts in the conceptual model and the sub-questions to answer the main research question, but also the shortcomings of the method and the made considerations. In the first research question an answer is given using the quantitative data on the distribution of environ-mental awareness among students in Shenzhen. These results are also compared with the results some of the survey questions were based on, of which the literature is discussed in the theoretical framework. After this the second sub question is answered using the results of the multi regressions analyses explaining to what extent certain variables have influence on conscious consumption patterns. The third research question uses qualitative (open questions of the survey and interviews) data to investigate the different factors that influence the conscious consumption of the students. Finally a conclusion is given that an-swers the main question by connecting the sub questions together and this is followed by and extensive discussion that gives the implications of the results and some recommendations for further research.

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2

T H E O R E T I C A L B AC KG R O U N D

In this chapter first the environmental footprint is discussed, where China is placed in a comparison between other countries. It shows that there are huge differences between countries as they have other governmental systems and also the environmental awareness and consumption patterns are varying. The green development of China is discussed here as well, as there are factors that can have a beneficial influence on this, but China has also characteristics that obstruct this. The Chinese context differs in many ways often due to its history and current political framework (Wu and Gaubatz, 2013). Furthermore relevant literature related to environmental awareness, behaviour and attitude among students and other groups is given. These studies were used to compare the results of this study with in research question 1. Finally a chapter of the case study is given which discusses the problems Shenzhen is facing and the developments this city is going through.

2.1 environmental footprint and green development As mentioned, the research group for this study are students in Shen-zhen. This is chosen as they probably will obtain more wealth in their (future) lives, as they have an higher education level and this often correlates with a good income (Wong, 2003).

The increase in wealth (it’s assumable that most of the high edu-cated people will probably obtain good living standards) can have two outcomes (Dinda, 2004). On the one hand, it can cause the beha-viour to be less environmental friendly, because this new groups now have access to more environmental unfriendly products and resources and therefore this will cause an environmental unfriendly behaviour. For example, the USA has one of the highest ecological footprints per capita (8,6 gha) (Global Footprint Network, 2013) even though it is a developed country. On the other hand, an increase in wealth and environmental awareness can also have a positive influence on the environmental footprint. People now have the possibility to care about the environment and also they have access to the resources and

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Figure 2.1.: Ecological footprint of countries in Global hectares/capita, 2013

Figure 2.2.: Ecological footprint of countries in Global hectares, 2013 knowledge to act on these concerns. This on their turn will change their behaviour. For example, a country such as Sweden is in the last stage of the Kuznets curve as the ecological footprint per cap-ita is 6.54 gha. Figure 2.1 shows the differences between the United states, Sweden, China (3,59 gha/capita) and the world (2,86 gha/capita) (Global Footprint Network, 2013).

At the moment China is still developing and therefore the foot-print/capita is relatively not that high. This is why also the world average/capita is this low because this also includes economic low countries that have a low footprint due to lack of access to resources. However as China is developing their footprint can increase/capita but they can also in a way “skip” this step (this is called leapfrogging) in the Kuznets curve and transform directly into a more environmentally conscious country (Geng and Doberstein, 2008). The population in China is at the moment the highest (1,38 billion) (Geng and Doberstein, 2008) and so the total ecological footprint of the whole of China is already the highest in world, followed by the United States and India, see Figure 2.2.

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2.1 environmental footprint and green development 7

At the moment the CO2 emission/capita in China is 7,55 ton (2013), which is much lower compared to the United States (16,40 ton/capita). The average for the world was in 2013 4,99 CO2 ton/capita and in Sweden the average is even lower than the world’s average: 4,62 ton/capita (The world bank, 2017). This is probably because the share of renewable energy consumption in Sweden is 49,5% in 2014 compared to 7,3% in the United States (18,9% on global level) (The world bank, 2017). Of course the population and density of Sweden is small and so it’s much easier to obtain a high share of renewable energy sources. However in China the share of renewable energy consumption was 17.1% in 2014, which means that even though they are still a developing country, they are (already) investing in these sectors. Furthermore China has the lowest amount of arable land (11,3% in 2014) a high population density and it is the country with the highest population (Shi and Yu, 2014). These are indications to believe that China will have a green development and in a way not become as polluting as the United States. The attitude of the current government of the United States is obstructive and not positive towards environmental development, but also the attitude and awareness of the public is not favourable. Compared to other wealthy capitalist countries Americans are an outlier: the level of disbelief is higher and the environmental concern is lower (McCright et al., 2016).

However it should be taken into account that the type of government in China is different and unique and this has a big impact on the environmental transition and behaviour. The government is top down and decides (simply said) without public involvement. At the moment the environment is a topic of concern for the government (at least this is how they define themselves), but if this concern for any reasons changes the involved policies can be changed or aborted easily (Wu and Gaubatz, 2013). In a green development public engagement is necessary and this can lead to a lower average consumption and so contribute to a lower ecological footprint (Chan et al., 2013). Geng and Dobberstein (2008) state that policies and technology barriers are challenges for a green developments in China. Public participation is another factor that is stated: “Public participation is very important for implementing a circular economy, due to both the complex nature of the concepts, and the array of potential contributions that more than one billion Chinese consumers can make”(Geng and Dobberstein, 2008, pp 236).

Even though from a Western point of view communism is often conceived as “bad” it can also be beneficial for environmental devel-opments. It allows the government to take immediate action and this can have a positive effect on the environmental transition (if the

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gov-Figure 2.3.: A side effect of the fast implementation of the bikes in Shenzhen

ernment is concerned about the environment), because the problem is so inevitable and strong actions will have direct impact(Beeson, 2010). This way even more “easily” the middle stage of the Kuznets curve can be skipped or at least be less high. An example in Shenzhen of the direct type of government is the bike plan: overnight 10,000 bikes were placed in the city (Mead, 2017). Using the bikes on such a big scale and numbers will have an immediate effect on the local emission levels and air quality. On the other hand, due to this progressive action many (side)effects were overlooked such as accidents due to a lack in bicycle lanes and the knowledge of people how to cycle. Or what about the lack of knowledge of other drivers and vehicles as overnight many more bikes participate in the traffic. Also the fact that not enough bicycle racks were placed caused the bikes to be spread all over the city, as can be seen in Figure 2.3.

So the type of policy is based in a way on trial and error: a plan is executed and often fast implied in China and from there on the side effects or problems that emerge are solved. If a plan is successful in one place — often Shenzhen is a practice base for programmes or (urban) plans — it is implanted in other cities or areas (Chen and de’Medici, 2010).

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2.2 environmental awareness and conscious consumption 9

2.2 environmental awareness and conscious consump-tion

According to UNEP (2000) environmental awareness is defined the following: ’Public awareness of the environment means the ability to emotionally understand the surrounding world, including the laws of the natural environment, sensitivity to all the changes occurring in the environment, understanding of cause-and-effect relationships between the quality of the environment and human behaviour, an understanding of how the environment works as a system, and a sense of responsibility for the common heritage of the Earth, such as natural resources - with the aim of preserving them for future generations.’

All these factors are in this study tried to capture in the creation of the concept of environmental awareness. As is shown in the con-ceptual model environmental awareness is based on the score and interrelations on different aspects; environmental knowledge, attitude, concerns and the position in certain statements.

For the questions regarding environmental statements 10 of the 25 statements of Cortes et al (2016) were used, but the research method and processing of the data is a bit different. This research was a comparative study between Brazilian and Portuguese students. The study mostly focusses on the quantitative data and the results of this without really seeking an explanation for the results or the differences between the two groups. The research field is different and there are no real similarities to ground a comparison with China, but the research group (university students) is the same though. Also this study in done in 2016, which is quite recently in contrast to the study of He et al which was done in 2007. In the study the 25 statements were divided in 5 groups: environmental concern, green consumption, environmental attitude, economic growth control and anthropocentric beliefs and per group at least one question was used in this study. The results and conclusion of Cortes et al was that there is an environmental concern among students but not a strong green consumption.

Another study on public environmental awareness was a research held in Ningbo. Even though this city is more than 1300 km from Shenzhen, it has some similarities. Ningbo is a big (international) port and export city as well. It developed and grew rapidly since 1990 and opened up to the world in the same way. The city is listed as a key investment area and it is also making a transition in its economy and developing toward a more innovative and light industry city. The income levels in Ningbo are also comparatively high due to economic growth and therefore living standards improve (Huang et al., 2006). The research investigated the use of household electronics and

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the results were that the use and possession of these products was much higher than the national average. The challenge for China is to deal with this (in the future only increasing) electronic waste. The public participations, environmental awareness and satisfaction level was researched and the results show that residents are not satisfied with the current environment and waste management. They would like to participate and share their environmental responsibility, for example by paying more for environmentally friendlier products (80 percent was willing). Also noteworthy is that the respondents, in comparison to a nationwide survey, thought that the responsibility for environmental protection was mainly a task for individuals (31% in comparison to 16,5% on national level). Also the thought responsibility of the government was much lower; 29% in comparison to 49% on national level (Huang et al, 2006). These results show that the residents of Ningbo are probably more aware and willing to engage in the solving of the environmental problems. On top of that, the study was held in 2003; due to development the awareness only increased and this has a positive effect on the environmental knowledge, attitude and involvement.

He (2011) conducted in 2007 a survey among university students in an urban area (Shanghai) and rural area (Gansu Province). The survey was on environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. The results from the study are a comparison between the two areas. Both the student groups had a poor environmental knowledge as the Shanghai students had a correction level of 56 percent and for Gan-sunese students this was 52 percent. The survey questions regarding environmental attitude had a global and local view and the results show that students from both groups have a positive attitude towards these statements. There is not a real difference between the two groups but the surprising outcome is that both the students are more global minded than local minded. This is in contrast with the expectations of the study and the theory of Harris (2006). The implications for this are that the students have the ability to increase their scale of attitude and concern which means that they know the environmental problem affects everyone and not just only China.

The study also asked questions to determine the behaviour of stu-dents on a Likert 3 point scale where the higher the score the higher the conscious behaviour. The questions were on behaviour at the moment and future behaviour, so willingness in the future. The results are that for both student groups the score for future behaviour is significantly higher than past behaviour and that the behaviour of Shanghai stu-dents is more environmental friendly than Gansu stustu-dents (2.29 versus

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2.3 shenzhen 11

2.06 for actual behaviour and 2.54 versus 2.31 for future willingness) (He et al., 2011).

Wong (2003) looked at environmental awareness among students in Beijing. The research group and topic is the same, but the only differ-ence is place (Beijing) and time (the surveys were conducted in 1998). In this study an urgency index of perceived environmental problems on a national and global level was made and the results show that students (n=350) rank water pollution as the most the most urgent, fol-lowed by deforestation and soil erosion, air pollution, loss of farmland and solid wastes (Wong, 2003). On a global level the perceived most urgent environmental problem is water pollution as well, followed by air pollution, deforestation, solid wastes and others. It is interesting that the students rank water pollution as the major problem while the other studies show that respondents are the most concerned about the waste. The study also shows that the students think the government is the most responsible (43,4%) and the responsibility of the public is only 5,7%, even though 90% is not satisfied with the current governmental environmental protection efforts. Also the percentage of the factors facilitating the implementation of environmental policy is only 4,9% on public participation and decentralizing (Wong, 2003). This is a huge difference with the results in Ningbo, where the thought necessity of public participation was much higher and the trust in a solution offered by the government was much lower.

Wong (2003) also looked at the top 12 of prioritizing development issues in China. He concluded that the protection of the environment was the first priority among 11% of the students and the second priority among 23% of the students. Only 1% ranked it as the last priority. These results show that the student are concerned about the problems and think environmental protection is necessary. Another result of this study that affirms this, is that almost 80% (in comparison the national 34,9%) of the students thought that environmental protection had a higher priority than economic growth. 54,3% of the students thought the environmental protection was more important than social welfare improvement (Wong, 2003).

2.3 shenzhen

Shenzhen was the first city in 1980 to be designated as Special Eco-nomic Zone (SEZ) causing the city to open up to the world economy and so have a more market free administrative system. This distin-guishment gave the city a head start in comparison to other Chinese cities. Global economic relationships were developed and on top of that the proximity to Hong Kong and Guangzhou is an advantage for

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Shenzhen as well. All of these characteristics resulted in one of the highest domestic immigration flows to the city as the city now has a demographic composition of 80 percent migrants (Bontje, 2014).

The city is dealing with many problems as the city has to distin-guish itself again due to competition of other Chinese cities as they are expanding as well. These cities are also cheaper and so Shenzhen is afraid of losing a market shares or a less strong economic growth. This is why the city is trying to make a transition from a industrial producing city to a ’new type’ of city that is involved more in light in-dustry and (technical) innovations. Chen and de’Medici (2010). In 2002 the government enacted a new plan that gave Shenzhen this special pioneering role and distinguishment again. The city often works as a experimental space for urban developments in China and this is more recently visible around the developments related to sustainability. The government wants to add a sustainable layer to it’s growth and so make the economy more diverse and dimensional and include this in the city planning.(Chen & d’Medici, 2010). The integration of these developments is shown in the implementation around creative cities and eco-cities.

However the original theories that have a Western perspective are changed due to the institutional context in China. Due to the top down government approach the original ideas around green cities, creative cities or eco cities that include public participation are changed and altered. Actually social aspects and values,public engagement, equality and even the developments toward a community sense are emphasized in the original literature, but for the Chinese context these are almost totally ignored(Jong et al, 2013). This new type of urban development in Shenzhen is also used to gain more (international) publicity and so attract economic growth in the form of investments(Jong et al, 2013). There is thus a combination in Shenzhen that makes the economy and city grow: it has a technical innovation, a new type of light industry and due to the popularity and (international)recognition around ecocities and creative cities it keeps this distinguishment in comparison to other Chinese cities (Yu, 2014).

Due to the government and bureaucracy interventions that are mostly top down, there is a lack of public warning and participa-tion and often the taken acparticipa-tions are not transparent. As Chan et al (2013) say as well in the article on flood risk management (a problem Shenzhen is facing due to an increase in precipitation due to climate change and a poorly adapted city) the city is at the moment relying too much on a hard engineering approach and there is a (at the moment) lost potential in investment on a lower level by public engagement and soft protection measures. This is why the role of this public

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(en-2.4 conclusion 13

vironmental) awareness and participation is the main topic in this research as it is in many ways overlooked by the Shenzhen govern-ment. Examining to what extent this is present will show the role of the public in the environmental development of Shenzhen and so if in any way from a bottom up approach there are environmentally conscious developments present.

Gu and Ma (2013) studied the environmental concerns and satis-faction of the floating migration living at the Shawan River Basin in Shenzhen and they investigated the willingness to stay in Shenzhen. The results show that in comparison to other cities their willingness was higher and this willingness increased when the respondents had a higher income or when they were older. The results of the environ-mental concerns among migrants was quite surprising: their living space (the river and the air) is highly polluted but their concern was mainly related to garbage disposal and noise control. The given explan-ation is that migrants don’t consider themselves locals and thus the current (living) situation is thought of as temporarily. Also the water pollution does not affect them directly, because they don’t use the wa-ter in the river for anything. Poor garbage disposal and noise nuisance does affect them directly in an obvious perceptible way. Finally the lack of knowledge and environmental education is also a major factor in the level of satisfaction with the living space and concern about the environmental problems (Gu and Ma, 2013).

2.4 conclusion

In the first sub chapter the current behaviour of countries were com-pared and it showed that unconscious behaviour only increased over time. This result will probably continue for a while; even more when developing countries develop without a strong leapfrog and so only have a stronger environmental footprint as their consumption and emission increases. However, the environmental awareness in coun-tries and among the public is increasing as people have higher concerns and understanding of the anthropogenic effects on the environment. The different articles show different outcomes: environmental aware-ness is not really present among lower economic classes. Among stu-dents in Beijing their knowledge is not very high but their concerns regarding environmental protection is present. So their attitude is pos-itive and this can contribute to a sustainable growth. The research in Beijing was almost 20 years ago and since that time Beijing and China developed hugely and therefore it is not representative (any more) for current students in Beijing or other cities. Also in the literature there is mostly looked at awareness, attitude and the impact of the

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growing consumption patterns of China and Asia. There is no recent literature with a Chinese view on conscious consumption patterns and as a result of this the action where people take any individual action to reduce their environmental footprint. It is thus an addition to the current debate to find out if students in Shenzhen have environmental awareness and to what extent this causes them to change their current behaviour to be more environmentally conscious.

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3

R E S E A R C H

This (case)study gives a mixed-method based answer on the main question:

The first sub question (see 3.3) gives a distribution of the variables and compares it with other studies. The second question includes quantitative multi-dimensional regression analyses and the third sub question is a more qualitative approach as it discusses the result of the open questions and the in-depth interview. This allows to get a broad image of the environmental awareness and the factors that influence this and the conscious consumption patterns.

3.1 research field and group

The research field for this study is the city Shenzhen in China and the focus group are Chinese university students at the Shenzhen univer-sity. The university was found in 1983 quickly after the designation of Shenzhen as a Special Economic Zone and currently the university has more than 30,000 students. The university offers 26 schools with 57 undergraduate programmes and 70 masters. Also it has engineering laboratories and social science research centres. This makes the univer-sity one of the fastest developing universities of China (International Office, 2016).

The research group are Chinese students at the Shenzhen university. This group will be a representation of the future high economic class of Shenzhen but also China and thus their position can play a role in the transition to a more sustainable China. Of course students are not representative for young people in Shenzhen or China, but they probably will become a high educated group and therefore their current and future consumption patterns will have a stronger impact on the environment, because they have a bigger chance of obtaining more wealth. Also they are the population group that are in the

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middle of the economic transition from Shenzhen from an industrial producing city to a more technical innovative progressive city. They will age, grow and develop with this transition and their environmental behaviour will be influenced by this but also the other way around (Wong, 2003). Also the presumable future high income class was chosen for this research because it’s a bit unethical to expect people from a low economic class to have concerns about the environment or wanting to change their behaviour. As can be seen from the results discussed in 2.3.1 This is why the research was not focused on other people in Shenzhen but on the young high educated group who will probably have a higher change of obtaining more wealth than a low educated group.

Even though the university attracts many foreign students, these students were not included as a focus group for two reasons. Firstly these students have a different background that influences their en-vironmental awareness and consumption and therefore this data will be deviant, caused by different variables and so influence the results. Secondly the researcher is only interested in the data of the Chinese students because their awareness and behaviour will influence the transition in Shenzhen and China.

3.2 conceptual model

The theme and related concepts of this study influence each other and so the concepts have to be investigated with more than one sub-question and research method to get an extensive understanding of them. Below the conceptual model is given which shows the interre-lationships of the sub questions. The concepts and interrelations are based on the literature and the survey.

As can been seen in this model environmental awareness is defined as environmental knowledge, attitude, concerns and position in cer-tain statements. Therefore these variables are the same colour red in the model. Environmental awareness is an “internal” variable on consumption patterns, which means that it comes from the person itself. The awareness comes from within and is influenced by variables that are both internal and external or only external. This is why the red variables are both external and internal. Environmental education is formed both from external factors as by someone from within: if there is interest in the topic the person will look up more information and increase their knowledge. It is also formed by external factors such as high school, the university or their family. Individual characters are this as well; gender and age can’t be changed and these are therefore

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3.3 sub questions 17 Individual characters Environmental Knowledge Environmental Awareness Environmental attitude Environmental Problem concerns Environmental statements Environmental education Surroundings Shenzhen University Conscious Consumption patterns External Internal

Figure 3.1.: The conceptual model that shows the interrelations of the variables

internal factor, but type of study and are also external because they are caused by this as well.

The variables that are not internal but only external are the effect of the surroundings, Shenzhen and the university. They influence the awareness, but also the conscious consumption patterns.

3.3 sub questions

For this research the following three sub questions were created to give an extensive answer on the main question of this study.

1. To what extent is the environmental awareness developed among students in Shenzhen and how is this in comparison to other studies? An extensive survey was designed to get an insight on the environ-mental awareness. This survey will determine the environenviron-mental awareness through environmental knowledge, the attitude towards certain problem areas and the position in statements. Also some gen-eral questions will show the concerns about the environment. To answer this research question a descriptive analysis of the variables is given to show an insight of the distribution of those variables and this will determine the environmental awareness of students in Shen-zhen. Therefore the answer on this research question will first have a table of distribution which shows the results of the survey questions and the different variables and concepts that are created with these questions. In this chapter throughout the different variables a

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compar-ison is made with the results of studies discussed in the theoretical background which gives it a comparative method as well.

2. To what extent does the environmental awareness among students influence their conscious consumption patterns?

This is the quantitative approach of the research because to answer this question the results of the regression analyses are used to research which variables have (higher) impacts on the consumption patterns. 3. In what ways is the environmental awareness and (conscious) consump-tion patterns of the students influenced by their surroundings, Shenzhen and the university?

Together with the open questions in the surveys and the in depth interviews this question will be answered and so this gives an in-sight in what ways the consumption patterns of the students are shaped and changed. This is therefore a more qualitative part of the research. Shortly, with the use of some literature and observations of the researcher it is discussed if students have any impact on the environmental awareness in Shenzhen.

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4

R E S E A R C H M E T H O D

4.1 explanation of the survey

Before the surveys, first the literature on the topic and concepts was investigated. With this information it was easier to make the survey and include as much useful questions as possible. Also this decreases the chance of conducting a survey with missing useful questions that are discovered while processing the results.

For this research 236 (after removing missing observations for the independent variable) students of the Shenzhen university filled in a questionnaire; 74 through online surveys and the rest with personal surveys on different places at the university through random sampling at different times and different places (Bryman, 2015). The students were stopped at campus and asked if they could fill in the survey; most of them were willingly but some rejected. The first few days a Chinese translator (one of the students from the university, with whom contact was good) helped out with the survey, to see which questions worked or if some of the questions were hard to interpret or unnecessary. The survey was quite face to face at that moment, because the questions were not translated yet. Notable is that in this test phase most of the students did understand the English questions, but they didn’t speak English very well and they also had difficulties with writing down their answers.

After this test period some questions were removed because other-wise the survey would be too long and a few questions were almost the same. Then this survey and instructions were translated so the researcher didn’t necessary need a translator when conducting the surveys. In the appendix this version of the survey can be found and with different colours it is shown which questions are based on other studies and/or compared with the results.

Except obtaining results by distributing surveys at the campus, different platforms of social media were also used. This technique was chosen because it can increase the N and sampling group, which is favourable for a quantitative research (Bryman, 2015). It can have some

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effect on the results though, because there is less overview and control on the respondents. Other circumstances that can influence the results are that they for example can work together and discuss the survey and so be affected by their surroundings. The respondents have the ability to look up information for the questions related to environmental knowledge and so obtain a higher score on this part of the survey. Also, they maybe don’t fully understand some questions and they don’t have the opportunity to ask, even though the survey was translated to Chinese (notable is that almost none of the students asked clarifying questions when filling it in on campus). Finally students who are interested in the environment are maybe more willing to fill in the survey and so the online respondent are not fully random sampled and this way the results can become biased because they filled it in as they are interested in the topic, and want to let their opinion be heard.

There are also benefits of an online questionnaire: respondents will probably feel more anonymous as you have no personal contact with them and so they have the full opportunity to answer all the questions truthfully, while with face to face survey’s respondents maybe give a more socially accepted answer. Students who filled in the online survey because they are more interested in the topic and the survey could give more interesting answers on the open questions. An advantage this gives is that these group of respondents are often are more aware and concerned about the topic and therefore can give more valuable information on the open questions.

To minimize the effect — where respondents may feel they have to answer in a certain way — the respondents were told that no answer is wrong and that the results will be processed anonymously. To prevent students from discussing the survey with each other while filling it in, they were importunately asked to do it by themselves.

The survey was shared on WeChat and with local assistance (Chinese students or professors met at the campus or during the interviews) the survey was shared on their WeChat or among their contacts as well. It’s difficult to make sure people will fill in the survey, because it will take 15 minutes of their time and you have nothing in return to thank them. Also most of the respondents never met you, which makes it harder. This programme was linked with an QR code as well and so students on campus who didn’t have time at that moment could scan the code and fill it in later.

The research method for this case study was partly based and in-spired by the different methods used by the literature discussed in the theoretical background and therefore it has a comparative approach as well (Bryman, 2015). To answer the different types of research questions, a variation of methods and data collection are necessary.

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4.1 explanation of the survey 21

For the first research question the results of the variables are described and discussed to see to what extent these are developed in Shenzhen. These variables as an overall can be called environmental awareness and this awareness is made up from environmental knowledge, gen-eral environmental attitude, concerns towards problem areas and the level of agreement of certain statements.

The first part of the survey asked about individual information such as gender, age, type of education discipline, place of birth, place of residence and how long they have lived in Shenzhen but also if the respondent had some environmental education in high school. The second part tested the environmental knowledge: 10 True or False questions were used from the study of He et al (2011) to investigate the environmental knowledge. This study was used because in the study itself it makes a brief comparison with other groups as well which means that these questions are used more often. This is followed by some general attitude questions towards the environment on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 and after this the concerns towards problem areas on a scale from 1 to 10 were asked. Conscious consumption behaviour (the independent variable) in 7 different areas were questioned and the survey ended with statements on which the respondents had to agree on a level from 1 to 5.

Finally the respondents were asked some statements related to green consumption, behaviour and awareness. For these statements 10 of the 19 questions of Cortes et al. (2016) were used. This is because then you have the possibility to compare the results with the results from the article. Not all were chosen because it would make the survey to long and some questions are probably too difficult to translate. Also some of the questions had similarities or were already asked in a different way. These statements were chosen because they will show a attitude towards certain problems and the outcome of level of agreement is an opinion and therefore an environmental awareness. Also two questions were added that show if and in what ways they think environmental protection is more or less important than other things such as economic growth or social welfare (statement 1 and 8).

Even though the survey was highly structured (the questions were multiple choice or on a scale from 1 to 5 or 10) the survey also contained some open questions regarding their conscious consumption behaviour and a question if Shenzhen in any way changed their awareness. The results will be more qualitative in comparison to the other results but the answers to the open questions will contribute to a broader understanding of the environmental concerns (Bryman, 2015). Some of the students (around a hundred per open question) unfortunately didn’t fill in the open questions. Mostly due to the fact that they didn’t

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know very good what to answer, didn’t feel like it or only wanted to do the closed questions. The Chinese open answers were translated with the help of a translator: one part in Shenzhen by the help of a Chinese friend and the other part back in the Netherlands from one of the other students. Some of the personal data, such as type of study, was sometimes also in Chinese. Translating these improved the N as well.

4.2 in-depth interviews

The independent variable is also determined by other variables that are not easily transformed in words or numbers. The variable is influenced, just as behaviour most of the time is, by irrationality and feelings. To fill this gap and to get a better understanding of the current develop-ments in Shenzhen, the role of the government and the university the following persons were interviewed in this order and they were found through connections while doing the surveys or at the introduction week. All the interviewed persons were recorded with permission, except for the third one. This is because it was a presentation and so the things said by the students would not be picked up by the recorder. 1. professor liu and 7 students This professor was a trans-lator in the introduction week and this is how we got in contact. She also guides an environmental course at the university where the students of different studies come together and discuss the causes and impacts of climate change. With her were 7 students interested in the interview whom questions could be asked as well and so give their views on certain topics.

2. carissa welton Carissa is living in China now for 10 years and is originally from the USA. She is an artist who tries to raise environmental awareness with her art and organises green drinks in Shenzhen. She believes that environmental educa-tion is important to change the behaviour at a bottom-up level and therefore she teaches children about the environment and climate change.

3. professor liu and 50 students The researcher gave a pre-sentation about the research and the results from the online survey and after this the results discussed and the students were asked about their opinions and perspectives.

4. professor huabo duan Professor Huabo Duan teaches in en-vironmental engineering at the university and gives an intro-duction course on environmental problems, which according to

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4.3 research method scheme 23

him attracts more students every year. He does a lot of research on waste management and consumer behaviour in relation to e-waste and also hosted a recycling programme at the university. 5. tammy, a member of green wind One of the students from the first interview gave me the contact information of Tammy who is already one year a member from “Green Wind”, a student association of the Shenzhen university. The Association has around a hundred members.

In chapter 7.1 summaries of the interviews can be found. The in depth interviews were done later in the research, because then there are more results or knowledge on the topic and you could ask better questions (Bryman, 2015). The interview and presentation with pro-fessor Liu was set up earlier in the research because she was a contact from the introduction week. The rest of the in depth interviews were done through contacts of fellow students, respondents or the internet. Even though more possible key persons were approached through emailing, not all responded or replied.

4.3 research method scheme

Figure 4.1 shows an overview of the research method to clarify the step taken, at what steps a translator was used and the location of the steps. The green part is done in Shenzhen and the rest in Amsterdam. Also the dates of the in depth interviews can be found in the scheme. 4.4 limitations

Deliberately a mixed method is chosen for this research. Quantitative data shows strong results (if the N is high) and through qualitative data the researcher learns about the developments in Shenzhen and China and the “why” of certain opinions/results. This can contribute to a broader multi-layered result. Also it is interesting to have these interviews, because you have a more personal conversation. Surveys are filled in quickly and it gives the researcher little opportunity to ask “why” people answered this way (Bryman, 2015).

In the sub questions of this research sometimes observations are used as a substantiation to make a certain argument. Observations were however not used as a main research method as they were not performed through observations schemes or in any other way intens-ively. It’s hard to interpret behaviour or observations as you have a different origin and cultural background and therefore it’s difficult to

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Creating the survey

Adjusting the survey Test round survey

with translator (1)

Translation (2) of survey to Chinese

Survey collection Online survey (1) In depth interviews

Recoding of surveys in SPSS Translation (4) open questions survey Introduction week Research proposal green light Transcribing of interviews 27-04 Tammy 26-04

Professor Huabo Duan

22-04 Carissa Presentation 20-04 Professor Liu Translators

1. Vanko an advertising student at the SZU who grew up in Shenzhen 2. Ximin Zhou a PHD student who studied in England 3. CoCo met through WeChat

4. Qianyun Liu a fellow student

R es earch in Sh enzh en Literature research Translating results online survey (3) T ime

Figure 4.1.: Research method scheme that shows the taken steps during the fieldwork and research

not let an opinion judge this and so influence the results. Nonetheless living six weeks in the city does allow you to get a general impression of the city (green-spaces, public transport, waste qualification, public transport, prices, advertisements) and other issues and so sometimes these type of observations are used to support certain a result. Also the researcher was a few days in other Chinese cities and sometimes the differences were major and quite obvious and therefore sometimes a comparison is made between the two. However it is still hard to not make assumption and this is why often literature is used to support the result of the observation.

Above and in the previous chapter already some of the limitations are given which can influence the results. Other effects are that there was a huge cultural difference between the researcher and the respond-ents and therefore respondrespond-ents could be less honest or a bit scared of. To prevent this the respondents were approached in an open way and it was emphasized that the survey would be anonymously and no answers were wrong. Sometimes students were approached in groups because this would increase the N and it would be less likely to decline because most of the time a few of the group were willing

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4.4 limitations 25

or spoke some English and were less scared of. On the other hand, because the researcher is a student as well, there are some similarities between the respondents and this increased the differences. Some of the respondents even came to ask what the researcher was doing and if they could participate.

The research was first conducted with the help of a translator be-cause even though the research group are high educated students, their English was most of the time not always sufficient enough. If the students did not speak any English (or if the translator was not there) the introduction of the survey would be shown which gave instructions in Chinese.

The translator also had influence on the outcomes; they had to really understand the answers you ask and not leave out information when translating it back to the researcher. This is why first the survey was filled in by the translator to understand how the questions are build up and how it is made up. As a researcher you also depend on the translation of the survey questions; if these are translated in a different way, respondents may answer on something else. Most of the questions were translated well, but later turned out some of the open questions suggested something else.

Time was also a limiting factor. The research took place in 6 weeks, which is quite a short period. Before the survey could be conducted it first had to be made and the research proposal had to be finished (for a green light of the thesis) There was limited time to make big changes to the survey, because if you changed it a lot the results of the previous survey couldn’t be used any more and so the quantity would decrease (the N).This is why first a too extensive survey was hold to see how long this one would take and if some of the questions could be removed to make the survey shorter but still effective. After this some of the questions were removed or some of the questions were altered a little. Now the survey took between 15 and 30 minutes. If the survey would be longer many of the respondents wouldn’t have the time (maybe the needed to go to other classes) and also people would feel a bit annoyed.

There was not a lot of time or the possibility to observe the collected data; if there was more time it would be possible to make a regression of the first hundred survey to see some results and which way it is going. Recoding the data and putting it in Stata took a lot of time back in the Netherlands, so for those six weeks it would not have been possible to do this in Shenzhen. Luckily some of the results could be observed because the online surveys showed the distributions per answer, but it was already too late to make big changes. Also the computer programme was not available, mostly due to the firewall of

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China. Even though with a VPN you had the possibility to look up information or articles on the topic, this was not very desirable. The internet was very slow and it took a long time to download something, which made it hard to do research on the literature in China.

As will be apparent in research question 2 the dependent variables only partly explain the environmentally conscious consumption pat-terns. Taken this into account beforehand in depth interviews were done. Even though these interviews gave a lot of information and clarified the results more, it would have been favourable to have more than 5 in depth interviews. More people who could be a keyperson were approached but some didn’t reply or didn’t had the time. Time is a factor for this as well; with limited time it’s hard to conduct surveys and interviews. It’s not only about the time the interview will take but also collecting or finding the right stakeholders.

Finally a lot of literature on Shenzhen or China is only written in Chinese and in the theory chapter this can’t be used. If this liter-ature was in English, governmental literliter-ature could be an addition to investigate what the goals of Shenzhen and China are regarding environmental development. It could be investigated how important public awareness, involvement and environmental education would be and what the future plans for these concepts are.

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5

S U B Q U E S T I O N 1

To what extent is the environmental awareness developed among students in Shenzhen and how is this in comparison to other studies?

In this chapter the used variables, the distribution and the trans-formation of them for the regression analyses will be discussed. The variables are based on the survey questions and most of them are used in the analyses. The survey can be found in the appendix; it had 24 questions and took on average about 15 minutes to complete. Most of the questions are closed because otherwise the survey would take too long and it would be much more difficult to analyse and structure the data. Beforehand the questionnaire was translated to Chinese with the help of a translator so that the results were not influenced by English language skills. The research only focussed on Chinese students and therefore only they were questioned. . In the variable table below a short overview of the variables is given and a more compact table is given in the appendix as well where the variables in Italic are used in the regression analyses in sub question 2 and the other variables are used to create these.

5.1 distributional table

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su b qu es ti on 1

Type of data Variable name Explanation or survey question N Mean or

distribu-tion Range

Personal data Age The age of the students 232 20.9 18-27

Gender The gender of the respondents 236 0=38.6%, 1=61.4% 0=Male, 1=Female

Study Type of study 225 1=24.4%, 2=27.6%,

3=48.0%

1=Alpha, 2=Beta, 3=Gamma

How_long Time the respondent lived in Shenzhen, in years 234 8.3 0-24 years How_long Dichotomous distribution of how long the

respond-ents have lived in Shenzhen

234 0=62.8%, 1=37.2% 0=≤9 years, 1=>9 years

SZornot Where is the respondent originally from 235 0=79.2%, 1=20.9% 0=not Shenzhen, 1=Shezhen

Environmental

edu-cation EE_highschool Did the respondent have some environmental edu-cation in high school 237 0=18.1%, 1=81.9% 0=No, 1=Yes EE_study How often in your study do you talk about the

en-vironment 237 2.71 Likert scale from 1to 5

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5.1 di st ri bu ti on al ta bl e 29

Type of data Variable name Environmental knowledge questions N = 234 True in % (1) False in % (0) Correct Environmental

knowledge L Coral reefs and rainforests are places with rich bio-diversity 97,86 2,14 True 97,86 M Soil degradation only happens in the northwest of

China

4,7 95,3 False 95,30

N Sandstorm can cause air pollution and degrades the

soil 86,75 13,25 True 86,75

O The environmental protection organizations often oppose coal power plants because coal is an non-renewable resource

41,45 58,55 True 41,45

P People compare the rainforest to the Earth’s kidney 60,94 39,06 False 39,06 Q Domestic discharge of wastewater is the main source

of river pollution

R Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and water

vapor are considered greenhouse gases 46,58 53,42 True 46,58 S Oil is one of the major pollutants of the ocean 51,71 48,29 True 51,71 T Acid rain occurs only in industrial areas 7,26 92,74 False 92,74 U The major characteristic of white pollution is that it

does not decompose 88,46 11,54 True 88,46

Evknowledge Amount of correct answers from variable M to U on

a scale from 1 to 10 Mean = 7,27

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su b qu es ti on 1

Type of data Variable name Explanation or survey question N Mean Range Environmental

con-cerns V Are you concerned about the environment? 234 3,78 Likert scalefrom 1 to 5 W How often do you think about the local

environ-mental problems?

3,1 X How often do you think about the global

environ-mental problems? 2,85

Y How often do you talk with friends or family about

the environment? 2,4

Z Are you more concerned about the environment than your friends/family and surrounding?

3,08 AA To what extent do you think more attention should

be paid to the environment by the government? 4,39

evconcern EE_study + V + W + X + Y + Z / 6 2,99

evconcern2 EE_study + V + W + X + Y + Z + AA / 7 3,19

evconcern3 V + W + X + Y + Z + AA / 6 3,27

Evconcern4 EE_study + V + W + X + Y + Z + K2/ 7 3,05

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problem areas AB Air quality 235 8,74 Levelcern/Likertscale of 1of

con-to 10

AC Water quality 8,67

AD Waste management 7,77

AE Global warming 7,37

AF Polar melt 6,54

AG Food security and shortages 8,09

AH Loss of biodiversity 6,64

AI Ozone layer 6,61

AJ Climate change 7,56

AK Deforestation 7,53

evproblems The average of AB-AK per respondent 7,55

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su b qu es ti on 1

Type of data Variable name Priority (top 5) N Amount %