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Top1. Introduction
In recent years, environmental problems caused by human activities have become increasingly prominent. Pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) have been argued to reduce environmental damages or benefit the environment (He et al., 2022; Jia & Yu, 2021; Steg & Vlek, 2009). PEBs range from simple actions (such as saving food or recycling plastic waste) to hard work (such as changing non-motorized vehicles or participating in initiatives to mitigate climate change). With growing concern for environmental sustainability, environmental protection behavior is critical (Bonasia et al., 2022; Ge & Lin, 2021; Panzone et al., 2021), especially as many businesses are developing eco-friendly products or packages (Song et al., 2022; Su et al., 2022; J. Zhu et al., 2022). Furthermore, residents have great potential in terms of environmental protection as end consumers (Jeanson et al., 2021; Lin & Wei, 2022; Si et al., 2022), particularly as a growing body of literature have studied influencing factors that affect residents’ environmental protection behavior, such as personal values (Pagliuca et al., 2022; Shulman et al., 2022), the influence of family members (Grønhøj & Thøgersen, 2017; Jia & Yu, 2021), and policy guidance (Ornaghi et al., 2018; Peng et al., 2021).
However, most of the research has focused on the influence of individual values and beliefs on PEBs, while relatively little attention paid to the role of the natural environment. The natural environment is important (Hidalgo-Crespo et al., 2022; M. Liu et al., 2022) because people’s willingness and behaviors to protect the environment are heavily influenced by their perception of the environment (Mohanty et al., 2021; Soares et al., 2021). Environmental perceptions are typically subjective assessments of environmental characteristics (Berthold et al., 2022; Dong et al., 2018). Furthermore, although research has found that early experiences of individuals have a long-term effect on psychological and economic behaviors (Hoynes et al., 2016; Malmendier et al., 2011), the impact of past environmental perception on present pro-environmental behaviors is yet to be investigated. This study aims to fill this gap.
The improvement of environmental quality varies from place to place, and people from different hometowns have different perceptions. Following the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013, China’s air quality generally improved, with the average concentration of PM2.5 and SO2 falling by 68 percent in the first 74 cities to implement the Ambient Air Quality Standard (Lin & Zhu, 2018). Residents living in different places experienced various emotions regarding environmental quality. According to the broken window theory, an untidy environment will lead more people to cause environmental damage (Carley, 2022; C. Wang et al., 2019). But, those who experienced a pro-environmental practice may be more motivated and willing to protect the environment (Y. Wang et al., 2021). Therefore, considering the variability in the perception of environment, the survey data used in this paper interviewed young people from over 300 prefecture-level cities in China. The extensive coverage can assist us in developing a comprehensive understanding of the impact of environmental quality.