Abstract

Haze pollution threatens residents’ health and has become an important public problem in China. With the gradual improvement of public environment consciousness, government failure in the environmental protection might stimulate individual coping behaviors. However, there is no implication about the mechanism differences within individual coping behaviors. This study aimed to understand Beijing residents’ four coping behaviors against health risks of haze pollution including two behaviors of “inverted quarantine,” i.e., wearing a mask when go outside (WM), purchasing air purifier (PAP), and two environmentally friendly behaviors, i.e., purchasing new energy vehicles (PNEV), making a real-time report of air pollution incidents to the government (MRR). We introduced risk perception and income into the theory of planned behavior, and used structural equation model to explore the formation mechanism of coping behaviors. The results showed that the positive effect of intention on behaviors of “inverted quarantine” is relatively higher than these environmentally friendly behaviors. Behavioral intentions are significantly affected by attitude (βWM = 0.24; βPAP = 0.37; βPNEV = 0.45; βMRR = 0.16), subjective norm (βWM = 0.46; βPAP = 0.41; βPNEV = 0.31; βMRR = 0.62) and risk perception (βWM = 0.74; βPAP = 0.73; βPNEV = 1.07; βMRR = 0.74) at 1% level. Furthermore, richer people showed higher level of coping behaviors than the poor, but showed similar or lower level of coping behavioral intentions. The conclusions would be helpful for policy makers to take effective measures to guide public behaviors and promote public participation in air pollution control.