Internet Use, Perceived General Social Fairness, and Local Environmental Satisfaction in China: Evidence from CGSS2021

Internet use has become an important channel through which citizens encounter and interpret information about social and environmental conditions. Using 2351 respondents from the Chinese General Social Survey 2021 (CGSS2021) in the baseline analyses, this study examines the association between Internet use frequency and local environmental satisfaction and explores perceived general social fairness as a possible social-evaluative correlate. Local environmental satisfaction is measured using a single six-category item concerning respondents’ satisfaction with their surrounding natural environment. Ordered Probit models are used as the primary specification, with OLS and Ordered Logit models reported as complementary specifications. The analysis additionally reports the category distributions of the principal ordinal variables, comparisons of local environmental satisfaction across Internet use frequency categories, pairwise correlations, and variance inflation factor diagnostics. More frequent Internet use is negatively associated with local environmental satisfaction. The coefficient remains negative across the reported specifications, although its model-specific magnitude and statistical precision vary with covariate and regional adjustment. An exploratory indirect-association analysis based on 2338 respondents indicates a small indirect association involving perceived general social fairness. Both component equations treat their outcomes as ordinal and are estimated using Ordered Probit models; statistical uncertainty is evaluated using 5000 nonparametric bootstrap replications with bias-corrected 95% confidence intervals. Because the data are cross-sectional, the focal constructs are measured using single survey items, and residual confounding and sample-selection bias cannot be excluded, the findings do not establish temporal ordering or causality.