Farmers’ awareness of environmental protection and rural residential environment improvement: a case study of Sichuan province, China

While most studies focus on the impact characteristics of farmers and family economic traits have on participation in rural environmental improvement, few studies focus on the relationship between farmers’ environmental awareness and rural residential environment improvement. Based on the survey data of 200 farmers in Sichuan Province, this paper divides farmers’ environmental awareness into three dimensions: environmental problem cognition, environmental pollution tolerance, and environmental protection attitude and constructs a binary logistic regression model to explore the relationship between farmers’ environmental awareness and the improvement of rural residential environment. The results show that the rural residential environment in Sichuan Province still faces some challenges, and farmers’ environmental awareness significantly influences their improvement behaviors. Higher levels of environmental problem cognition can promote farmers’ participation in environmental improvement, but sensitive environmental pollution tolerance does not promote environmental improvement behavior. Positive environmental attitudes have both positive and negative effects on improving behavior. In addition, individual characteristics of farmers, household economic aspects, and nonpoint source pollution status of their residence also affect their participation in rural environmental improvement to varying degrees. This study can help us better understand the explanatory role of farmers’ subjective consciousness in their environmental behavior decision-making and thus provide support for the formulation and implementation of policies of human settlements improvement.