Study on the factors and pathways influencing the public’s environmental risk response behavior from the perspective of perceived risk – A case study of JS industrial zone in Shanghai, China

Abstract As the environmental risk awareness increases, the public is highly concerned about the possible environmental risks in industrial zones. When the public’s risk response behaviors are different, the social operation cost and governance effectiveness will also vary greatly. This article divides the public risk response behavior into two forms: collaborative and antagonistic. It conducts research in the JS industrial zone, using the structural equation model to study the influencing factors and action paths of the public risk response behaviors. The results show that the enhancement of system trust and self-efficacy will promote the public to adopt collaborative behavior, while lacking of system trust, public participation efficacy and perceived benefit will lead to antagonistic behavior, and system trust is the decisive factor. In addition, the mediating effect of risk perception is significant in the transformation from lacking of system trust and public participation efficacy to antagonistic behavior, especially in the influence mechanism of public participation efficacy, which is fully mediated. Finally, this article proposes to implement the rights and responsibilities, improve interest compensation, break the decision-making mode, strengthen knowledge cultivation and deepen risk communication, so as to guide the public’s collaborative behavior, avoid the occurrence of confrontation events and realize the sustainable development of risk society.