Study on Resistant Action of Environmental Mass Incidents

Environment and resources have become the obvious problems with the rapid development of China, as a result, the resistant action of the public in environmental events becomes increasingly frequent. The mechanism of public collective action in environmental events is investigated in this paper through the qualitative comparative analysis on 13 public resistances against environmental issues during 2010-2014. The study finds that politics, scientific cognition, rumor, appeal, media, actio and disposal of pointing person are the key factors for the resistant action of environmental mass incidents. The risk perception and scientific cognition of mass against environmental projects are affected by information imbalance, in which rumors may aggravate the development of events and trigger violence among the public. In the Internet era, network public opinion can bring more attention to events, and reports from the central media reflect political "metaphor". It is an effective path to avoid environmental mass incidents for government to share the decision-making power with the public in managing environmental projects based on information dissemination and communication.