The full implementation of the River Chief System in China needs to pay attention to the guidance of public participation. Based on the survey data of residents in Jiangsu Province, the binary logistic model and the multiple regression model are used to study the influences of publicity effects of policies of the River Chief System on the residents’willingness to pay for water environment and its heterogeneous effects on different groups. The results show that in general, the public in Jiangsu Province have a high willingness to participate in the governance of rivers and lakes, and about 75.4% of the respondents are willing to pay some fees for water environment governance. The full implementation of the River Chief System can significantly improve the residents-willingness to pay for water environment, indicating that the “top-down” governance mode also has a good driving effect on the “bottom-up” public participation. The publicity effects of the River Chief System have different influences on the willingness to pay for water environment among different groups. For the groups with higher annual income and lower perception of the importance of water environment, the publicity effects have stronger positive feedback. It is pointed out that the publicity of the River Chief System should be further strengthened, and differentiated education and publicity programs of water environment science popularization should be formulated for different social groups. At the same time, the channel for the public to participate in the River Chief System should be widened, and the residents’willingness to pay for water environment should be “realized” so as to realize the joint water control between the River Chief and the public.