IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rgovxx/v10y2025i2p281-308.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public attitudes towards sustainable development in a changing world: evidence from COVID-19

Author

Listed:
  • Ting Guan
  • Yufei Liao
  • Bing Xue

Abstract

The impact of major global events on public attitudes towards sustainable development is crucial for shaping global public policy. This paper explores this relationship by examining how COVID-19 has affected public attitudes towards sustainability. We analyzed data from an online survey of 23,895 respondents across China in February 2020 to study the relationship between the severity of the pandemic and public attitudes, as well as the underlying dynamics, including the mediating roles of government intervention and media trust. Our findings indicate a significant negative correlation between the severity of COVID-19 and Chinese public attitudes towards sustainable development, particularly among employees, females, younger individuals, and those with a college degree or above. We further find that public interventions (i.e. governmental regulations) promote a positive shift in attitude through mediating effects. We also discover that an individual’s trust in public media plays a role in mediating the effect between individual exposure to media and a supportive attitude towards sustainable development. This study deepens our understanding of how public attitudes change in response to major events, providing valuable insights into the interplay between global events and public opinion on sustainability.

Suggested Citation

  • Ting Guan & Yufei Liao & Bing Xue, 2025. "Public attitudes towards sustainable development in a changing world: evidence from COVID-19," Journal of Chinese Governance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 10(2), pages 281-308, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rgovxx:v:10:y:2025:i:2:p:281-308
    DOI: 10.1080/23812346.2025.2452007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/23812346.2025.2452007
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/23812346.2025.2452007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:rgovxx:v:10:y:2025:i:2:p:281-308. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rgov .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.