ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Environmental Psychology
Government Environmental Regulation and Farmers' Engagement in Traditional Folk Practices: The Mediating Roles of Ecological Cognition and Social Norms
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Tourism And Historical Culture, Zhao Qing University, Zhao Qing, China
- 2Faculty of International Tourism and Management, City University of Macau, Taipa, Macao, SAR China
- 3Xixian High School Affiliated to Central China Normal University, Xinyang, China
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As an important carrier of cultural identity and community cohesion in rural Chinese society, traditional folk activities often generate tensions with modern ecological protection goals due to their resource-intensive characteristics. This study takes the millennium-old "Firecracker Lion Dance" activity in Deqing County, Guangdong Province, as a research case to explore how government environmental regulation influences farmers' willingness to participate in the Sustainable Firecracker-Lion Dance Custom, with a particular focus on the mediating roles of social norms and ecological cognition. Based on 423 valid samples collected through fieldwork from 2022 to 2024, a structural equation model (SEM) is constructed to systematically test the regulatory pathways and mechanism differences between incentive-based and coercive environmental regulation. The results show that incentive-based regulation significantly enhances farmers' willingness to participate through motivational mechanisms (β = 0.229, p < 0.001), whereas coercive regulation shows no significant effect. Social norms exert significant positive effects on participation willingness (descriptive norms: β = 0.167, p < 0.001); injunctive norms: β = 0.238, p < 0.001)), reflecting the behavioral constraints of group identity and opinion orientation in rural acquaintance societies. Meanwhile, ecological cognition significantly inhibits participation willingness (β = –0.210, p < 0.001) and exhibits a negative mediating effect in the coercive regulation path. The results of this study offer theoretical validation and practical significance for the integrated governance of culture and ecology within the paradigm of ecological civilization.
Keywords: Ecological civilization, Ecological cognition, environmental regulation, rural cultural governance, social norms
Received: 12 Sep 2025; Accepted: 09 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 wu, Feng, liu and huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Jiaxiao Feng
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