Abstract: In the risk society, the “command-and-control” model, which takes environmental risks as its object, leads to the lack of understanding of environmental risks and brings about the question of the legitimacy of regulation, and at the same time, the limited social participation and the poor expression of interests in this model also form a tension with the demand for regulation in the risk society. The choice of environmental regulation model in the risk society should take into account the special characteristics of risk regulation and meet the needs of social development, on the basis of a comprehensive understanding of environmental risks, through the communication and consultation process, to promote the full expression of interests, and to promote the circumscription and improvement of regulation. To this end, the cooperative regulation model should be introduced, which not only realizes the intrinsic needs of environmental risk regulation and strengthens the legitimacy of environmental regulation but also meets the needs of China’s whole process of people’s democracy, with full feasibility. The development of the cooperative environmental regulation model in China should be oriented towards the improvement of the social governance system, with the establishment of a communication and consultation mechanism as the core procedure, and fully safeguarded through the method of measuring interests and the identification of and response to interests.