Intergenerational Gap of Chinese Public Environmental Awareness and the Determinants

Based on the data from "2013 Chinese General Social Survey", this paper analyzes the Chinese public environmental awareness. The analysis reveals that there are intergenerational gaps of environmental awareness between the young people who were born after the reform and opening up and the older persons who were born before the reform and opening up. And the gaps are mainly because the determinants are different according to the further analysis. Firstly, young people's environmental awareness is mainly affected by the family income per head, the social security level, political status, and the use frequency of the traditional media and new media. Secondly, the older people's environmental awareness is mainly affected by political status, the higher education whether they have received, and the use frequency of new media. Finally, the "social factor", which is composed of objective class status(occupation status), subjective class status(subjective identity of the social and economic status), unit nature, household nature and political status, has the greatest impact on the young people's environmental awareness. And the "cultural factor", which is composed of whether they have received higher education and the use frequency of the traditional media and new media, has the greatest impact on the older people's environmental awareness.