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Social Indicators Research

Erschienen in:

01.07.2009

New Evidence of the Postmaterialist Shift: The Experience of Hong Kong

verfasst von: Ka-Ying Wong, Po-San Wan

Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research | Ausgabe 3/2009

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Abstract

This article makes use of survey data collected in 1992 and 2007 to examine the question of whether or not Postmaterialism is gradually becoming manifest in Hong Kong and to explore the applicability of Postmaterialist theory to this affluent Chinese society. Our findings basically support the hypotheses of the theory that the continued socioeconomic development of Hong Kong is giving rise to a populace that is increasingly inclined towards Postmaterialism. Younger people are more Postmaterialist than their seniors. In addition, Postmaterialists are more likely than Materialists to support the ‘new politics’ and democracy. Nevertheless, Hong Kong is far from being a Postmaterialist society. Multivariate regression analysis also revealed that the Materialist/Postmaterialist orientation is neither related to age nor to formative security.

Vorheriger Artikel A Note on the Dimensionality of Quality of Life Scales: An Illustration with the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS)

Nächster Artikel Subjective Well-Being as an Indicator for Clinical Depression

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For example, the Eurobarometer surveys and the World Values Surveys. The latter covers 79 societies around the globe; regrettably, Hong Kong is not among them.

On the reasons why Postmaterialism is beneficial to democratization, see Gibson and Duch (1994) and Inglehart (1997, p. 210). For discussion on the impact of Postmaterialism on politics, see Curry and O’Connell (2000) and Davis (2000).

There are three commonly used versions of the Materialism/Postmaterialism measure. In view of the fact that in a telephone survey it is difficult to ask the respondents to make a repeat selection from among eight or twelve development goals, we selected the original four-choice Materialist/Postmaterialist values battery. On the advantages and disadvantages of the four-choice and twelve-choice measures, see Inglehart and Abramson (1994).

Subjective social class identification at age 15 was measured by asking our respondents to identify the social class of his/her father when the respondent was 15 years of age. This variable was used to estimate ‘formative security’, i.e., economic and physical security during one’s formative years (Inglehart 1990, p. 162).

If a respondent’s first and second choices were ‘maintaining order’ and ‘fighting rising prices’, we classified him/her as the ‘Materialist type’ because his/her top priorities focused exclusively on Materialist goals. If a respondent’s first and second choices were ‘having more say in government’ and ‘protecting free speech’, we classified him/her as the ‘Postmaterialist type’ because his/her top priorities focused exclusively on Postmaterialist goals. If a respondent’s first and second choices were a combination of two kinds of goals, he/she would be classified as being a ‘mixed type’, a mixture of Materialist and Postmaterialist.

A survey conducted in Hong Kong in the early 1980s suggested that a Materialist orientation has prevailed for some time, and a Postmaterialist outlook is emerging. However, since the survey was not based on oral interviews with a representative sample, these results cannot be viewed as representative and conclusive (Inglehart 1990, p. 155). The twelve-choice measure of Materialism/Postmaterialism was included in two rounds of Hong Kong Social Indicators surveys conducted in the mid-1990s. Ho and Leung (1997) concluded that a cultural shift had not yet occurred, mainly because the education system and social activists had failed to play a leading role in the cultivation of Postmaterialist values.

Multinomial logistic regressions yielded basically similar results.

For the sake of simplicity, we used the ‘support for new politics index’ and the ‘support for democracy index’ instead of the six indicators as independent variables for the regressions.

According to a representative household survey conducted in 1988, 47.7% of the respondents declared that they were worried about the occurrence of political instability in Hong Kong even before 1997; 75.5% thought that it was likely that after the return of Hong Kong to China civil rights would be curtailed; 73.2% anticipated a reduction in individual freedoms; 66.9% expected stagnation or even a deterioration of living standards; and 61.1% envisaged deterioration of the legal system (Lau et al. 1991, p. 176).

Soon after the transition, Hong Kong unexpectedly suffered a sudden economic downturn triggered by the Asian financial crisis, the bursting of the local real estate bubble, and a loss of competitiveness due to rapid economic development in mainland China. The arduous process of internal economic restructuring was aggravated by the inexperience of the first government of the Hong Kong SAR in managing socioeconomic crises. The introduction of a new national security law in 2002 and the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 also rekindled long-standing fears of communist oppression and of epidemics spreading from across the border. The public’s discontent eventually exploded in a massive demonstration on 1 July 2003, when more than half a million people took to the streets.

Hong Kong is a middle-class society. According to the ‘2007 Hong Kong Social Image Telephone Survey’ conducted by the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, eight out of ten economically active respondents considered themselves as belonging to one of the middle classes—27.6% to the lower-middle class, 45.3% to the middle class, and 6.9% to the upper-middle class; as compared with 12.1% who identified with the working class, 7.5% the lower class, and 0.3% the upper class.

Hong Kong has become a highly service-oriented economy. Over the past two decades, tertiary production as a proportion of GDP and total employment increased respectively from 70.5% to 90.7% (1985–2005) and 55.2% to 86.3% (1986–2006); while the corresponding figures for secondary production were 28.9% to 9.2% and 42.8% to 13.5% (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government 2007, p. 44).

According to the ‘2007 Hong Kong Social Image Telephone Survey’, 29.6% of the respondents worried about losing their job, 37.6% about losing everything they had earned for themselves, and 32.4% about being replaced by others. Class differences were mostly significant—the lower the class, the greater the tendency to worry.

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Titel: New Evidence of the Postmaterialist Shift: The Experience of Hong Kong
verfasst von: Ka-Ying Wong
Po-San Wan
Publikationsdatum: 01.07.2009
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Erschienen in: Social Indicators Research / Ausgabe 3/2009
Print ISSN: 0303-8300
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-0921
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-008-9299-3

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