Abstract: Using Olson’s collective action theory, China’s rural water environment governance issues were analyzed. The results show that rural water environment governance, as a public good, requires the participation of villagers, enterprises and local governments. However, in order to realize their own interests, all the main bodies have appeared to “free ride”. To achieve effective governance of the rural water environment, it is necessary to establish a perfect public participation incentive mechanism, enterprise incentive mechanism and local government incentive mechanism to overcome the “free rider” behavior of each governance subject, enhance the subject ’s awareness and action ability to participate in rural water pollution governance and realize sustainable development of rural water environment.

Key words: rural water environment, governance, collective action, selective incentive