Public pro-environmental behavior plays a positive role in solving environmental pollution problems. In a real socioeconomic system, because public pro-environmental behavior has characteristics of externality and interactivity, a number of factors, such as external information and the behavior of others, could affect the pro-environmental behavior of individuals who optimize their own strategies by interacting with the outside world; thus, public pro-environmental behavior and social interaction are very closely related. In order to study the impact of social interaction on public pro-environmental behavior and its mechanisms, the authors of this paper conducted an empirical study based on an Ordinary Least Square (OLS) regression model and data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS). The empirical results show that: (1) social interaction has a promoting effect on public environmental protection behavior, and social interaction has a more significant impact on private environmental protection behavior; (2) the public will not only adjust their own environmental protection behavior by directly observing the behavior of others, they will also obtain environmental protection knowledge through social interactions which thus have a positive impact on their behavior. It is of great practical significance to study the impact of social interactions on public pro-environmental behavior.
Keywords: OLS regression; empirical research; public pro-environmental behavior; social interaction.