Abstract:

Public participation is the base of environmental protection, which can fill up gaps left by government and market, and can also reduce the expense on agricultural environment management. Dapu town, located in the Taihu Lake Valley, is facing the serious problem of nonpoint pollution, and its level of public participation in environment protection is rather low. To find out the main influential factors of public participation in agricultural environment protection, taking Dapu town as a case study, 550 people in the town were inquired by questionnaires about their environmental awareness and participation. 8 items were designed in the questionary which concluded 24 questions. Then the data collected by the questionnaires were studied with multivariate regression analysis. The results showed that the level of environmental knowledge, attention of environment, education, awareness of law and feeling of pollution are the most significant influential factors of public participation in agricultural environment protection. Finally, the paper suggested that the level of environment knowledge should be raised, attention of environment more paid, awareness of law and feeling of pollution strengthened to improve the public participation in Dapu town.

Key words: public participation, environment protection, multivariate regression, influencing factor, Dapu Town