Abstract:  Public participation in environmental protection is a requirement of social development and an effective way to prevent environmental risks from escalating into social risks. Public participation in environmental protection is of great significance in safeguarding public rights and interests, giving full play to the function of the mass supervision and meeting the need of government administration, thus faciliting the cause of environmental protection. The major componets and structures of public participation mechanism of environmental protection consist of two layers. One is the series of holistic and fundamental factors that influence public participation, driven by external motivation and mainly referring to the social structure and system. The other is public environmental protection awareness driven by internal motivation which includes awareness of environmental science, environmental ethics and legal awareness of environmental protection. The research results show that the willingness of public environmental participation has obvious spatial characteristics. The forms of tipoffs have a significant impact on public participation in environmental protection. Population with Household registration and GRP also have a significant positive effect on environmental tipoffs, but the per capita disposable income has no significant impact. 

Key words: Key words： environmental protection, public participation, environmental tipoffs, Spatial Econometric Models, spatial correlation