Public environmental complaint reporting is currently the most popular way of public participation, offering a flexible way to provide pollution indicators for the government in China. Utilizing air pollution complaint reporting data from 339 Chinese cities for 2017-2020, the annual and monthly spatiotemporal variations of reporting channels and pollution sources were analyzed using standard deviation ellipse and spatial autocorrelation and exploring the relationship between complaint reporting and socio-economic activities. The main results are as follows: (1) The number of complaint reports showed an initial increase followed by a downward trend from 2017 to 2020. (2) The standard deviation ellipse indicated that high-value areas for complaint reporting were mainly concentrated in the central and eastern regions (3) Telephone and WeChat were the two primary channels. Due to the influence of COVID-19 on the elderly, complaint reports by telephone decreased significantly in 2020. (4) Industrial and residential sources were identified as the main contributors to complaint reports. (5) Cities with high levels of economic development and high population density had higher complaint reports. The findings offer valuable bottom–up insight for government decision-making in atmospheric environmental management.
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