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Subjective Well-Being of Chinese Landless Peasants in Relatively Developed Regions: Measurement Using PANAS and SWLS

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Abstract

The government of China expropriated the lands of peasants for urban development. Though some landless peasants have become the urban residents in the household registration system, they still recognize themselves as traditional peasants in the psychological cultural aspects. And they do not enjoy the same social security as urban citizens. This study explores the subjective well-being (SWB) of Chinese landless peasants using two scales, namely, the positive and negative affect schedule (PANAS) and the satisfaction with life scale (SWLS). A total of 1,236 landless peasants from three relatively developed cities (Nanjing, Yangzhou, and Hangzhou) were included in the sample. Results indicated that 60 % of the respondents got NA scores above the midpoint of scale (30) and 64.64 % of the respondents reported PA scores below the midpoint of scale (30). And 64.56 % of the respondents got SWLS scores below the midpoint of scale (20). SWLS is positively related to PA and negatively related to NA. Therefore, as landless peasants possess more or stronger negative emotions, their SWB decreases. Unfair or unreasonable land compensation and resettlement policy are supposed to lead to negative emotions, while incomplete social security system leads to low life satisfaction among landless peasants.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (71173099 & 71473117), the Youth Program of National Natural Science Foundation (70903002), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-11-0228) and the key project of the National Social Science Fund entitled Social stability risk assessment of major policies and projects (11AZD108) and Study on Public Participation Mechanism in the Municipal Development Planning, China (13&ZD176). The author would also like to thank Peiyi Lu (School of Communication and Design, Sun Yat-sen University) for her contributions to this study. The authors also want to thank the anonymous reviewers for their precious comments to the manuscript.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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  1. Department of Social Work and Social Policy, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Liang

  2. School of Economics and Management, Tongji University, Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

    Demi Zhu

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  1. Ying Liang
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Correspondence to Ying Liang.

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Liang, Y., Zhu, D. Subjective Well-Being of Chinese Landless Peasants in Relatively Developed Regions: Measurement Using PANAS and SWLS. Soc Indic Res 123, 817–835 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0762-z

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