<p>The willingness and behavior of residents to engage in environmental governance and protection are the most direct drivers of environmental improvement, and constitute a vital foundation for achieving ecologically livable conditions and the reform of ecological civilization systems. Based on survey data from 769 respondents collected in Chongqing, this study aims to explore the relationship among social capital, environmental awareness, government satisfaction, and residents’ participation in environmental governance, in order to reveal the key factors that promote eco-friendly behaviors. This paper uses SPSS25.0 to conduct descriptive statistics, one-factor analysis of variance, correlation analysis, multiple regression analysis, mediation effect tests and other statistical methods. The results demonstrate that social capital exerts a significant positive impact on residents’ participation in environmental governance. Moreover, social capital is significantly positively correlated with key factors such as environmental awareness and government satisfaction. In particular, participation willingness has a significant positive effect on participation behavior, highlighting the importance of motivating individual willingness to participate. Further analysis reveals that environmental awareness plays a partial mediating role between social capital and participation willingness, whereas the mediating effect of government satisfaction is not significant, indicating that enhancing environmental awareness is one of the key pathways to promote participation behavior. The findings of this study are significant for formulating and implementing more effective environmental protection policies and measures, emphasizing the strategy of promoting residents’ participation in environmental governance by enhancing social capital and raising public environmental awareness.</p>