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Social Capital and Satisfaction with Crime Control in Urban China

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Abstract

By applying the symbolic perspective to the context of Chinese urban society, this paper examines how three dimensions of social capital—social trust, social bonds, and social cohesion—are associated with satisfaction with crime control among Chinese urban residents. The individual-level data from the 2005 China General Social Survey (CGSS) are linked with provincial-level data on arrest rates and economic and demographic characteristics. The analysis shows that bridging trust and neighborhood cohesion are significantly positively related to satisfaction with crime control. The effects of bonding trust and social bonds on satisfaction with crime control are not significant. The results provide partial support for the symbolic theoretical perspective and extend our understandings of the impact of diverse forms of social capital on crime control attitudes to a non-Western context.

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Notes

  1. The Delphi method is a structured communication technique, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts (Linston and Turoff 1975). In the standard version, the experts answer questionnaires in two or more rounds. After each round, a facilitator provides an anonymous summary of the experts’ forecasts from the previous round as well as the reasons they provided for their judgments. Thus, experts are encouraged to revise their earlier answers in light of the replies of other members of their panel. It is believed that during this process the range of the answers will decrease and the group will converge towards the "correct" answer. Finally, the process is stopped after a pre-defined stop criterion (e.g., number of rounds, achievement of consensus, and stability of results) and the mean or median scores of the final rounds determine the results (Rowe and Wright 1999).

  2. Data analyzed in this paper were collected by the research project “China General Social Survey (CGSS)” sponsored by the China Social Science Foundation. This research project was carried out by Department of Sociology, Renmin University of China & Social Science Division, Hong Kong Science and Technology University, and directed by Dr. L. Li and Dr. Y. Bian. The author appreciates the assistance in providing data by the institutes and individuals aforementioned. The views expressed herein are the author’s own.

  3. The China Procuratorial Yearbook publishes the annual work reports submitted by the People’s Procuratorate to the People’s Congress for each province, which report number of arrests. The data file was compiled by Dr. Yili Chen, Associate Professor of Economics, Southwest University of Political Science and Law, China.

  4. A factor analysis was conducted for all trust items. The results suggest that trust in strangers, reflecting bridging trust, is correlated but distinct from trust in neighbors, friends, and relatives, which captures bonding trust.

  5. As a significant association between a lagged measure of crime rates and support for punishment has been observe in the prior literature (Baumer et al. 2003; Rankin 1979), models are estimated respectively using one-, two-, and three-year lagged measures of arrest rates (i.e., arrest rates in 2004, 2003, and 2002). No differences are found across the models.

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Acknowledgements

The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful comments and constructive suggestions on earlier drafts of this article by Steven F. Messner, Ryan D. King, Shanhe Jiang, Eric G. Lambert, and the reviewers. The author would also like to extend a special thanks to Yili Chen for generously sharing his data for use in this study.

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  1. Department of Sociology, State University of New York-Albany, 1400 Washington Ave., Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Yue Zhuo

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Zhuo, Y. Social Capital and Satisfaction with Crime Control in Urban China. Asian Criminology 7, 121–136 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-012-9130-6

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