Objective/Meaning This study explores villagers' willingness to participate in rural environmental governance and its influencing factors, aiming to clarify the core role of villagers in environmental governance and provide empirical evidence and policy references for improving the effectiveness of rural environmental governance.

Methods/Procedures Based on 286 valid questionnaires collected in Fuzhou City in 2024, multiple linear regression analysis was conducted using SPSS software to examine the impact of villagers’ personal characteristics, social capital, village environment, and government actions on their participation willingness.

Results/Conclusions The results indicate that villagers' willingness to participate in environmental governance is jointly driven by four categories of factors: personal, social, environmental, and governmental. Enhancing villagers’ competency, fostering social capital, creating a participatory atmosphere, and optimizing funding mechanisms can effectively promote their active involvement and improve governance outcomes. The synergistic effect of these multifaceted factors further activates villagers’ agency and endogenous motivation, thereby facilitating a fundamental shift in rural environmental governance from a “government-led” model to one characterized by “active villager participation and collaborative governance.”