Determinants of citizens’ willingness to participate in environmental governance – An empirical study

The environmental implications of industrialization and urbanization have elicited sustainability concerns which have shot into prominence discussions on citizens’ participation in environmental governance. Though Ghana and a host of countries are at the forefront of promoting eco-friendly behaviors and practices, studies on participation however lack the psychological aspect of it. In view of this, the current study integrates the theory of planned behavior, and the norm activation model to investigate citizens’ environmental governance participation determinants. Utilizing the structural equation modeling technique, 576 data were drawn and analyzed for this study, and the results revealed a positive relationship between “awareness of consequences” and “personal norm” on one breadth, and “ascription of responsibility” and “personal norm” on the other. The results further confirmed the positive relationship between “ascription of responsibility”, and “behavior intention”, as well as “attitude”. “Personal norm” also related positively with “behavior intention”, but not with “awareness of consequences”. “Attitude”, “subjective norm” and “perceived behavior control” were all revealed as positively related to “intention behavior”. These results provide insights into mechanisms to institute toward sustainable environmental governance promotion.