[Abridged] We use the final data of the VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey (VIPERS) to investigate the effect of environment on the evolution of galaxies between $z=0.5$ and $z=0.9$. We characterise local environment in terms of the density contrast smoothed over a cylindrical kernel, the scale of which is defined by the distance to the $5^{th}$ nearest neighbour. We find that more massive galaxies tend to reside in higher-density environments over the full redshift range explored. Defining star-forming and passive galaxies through their (NUV$-r$) vs ($r-K$) colours, we then quantify the fraction of star-forming over passive galaxies, $f_{rm ap}$, as a function of environment at fixed stellar mass. $f_{rm ap}$ is higher in low-density regions for galaxies with masses ranging from $log(mathcal{M}/mathcal{M}_odot)=10.38$ (the lowest value explored) to at least $log(mathcal{M}/mathcal{M}_odot)sim11.3$, although with decreasing significance going from lower to higher masses. This is the first time that environmental effects on high-mass galaxies are clearly detected at redshifts as high as $zsim0.9$. We compared these results to VIPERS-like galaxy mock catalogues based on the galaxy formation model of De Lucia & Blaizot. The model correctly reproduces $f_{rm ap}$ in low-density environments, but underpredicts it at high densities. The discrepancy is particularly strong for the lowest-mass bins. We find that this discrepancy is driven by an excess of low-mass passive satellite galaxies in the model. Looking at the accretion history of these model galaxies, i.e. the times when they become satellites, a better (yet not perfect) agreement with observations can be obtained in high density regions by assuming either that a not-negligible fraction of satellites is destroyed, or that their quenching time-scale is longer than $sim 2$ Gyr.
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