The Social Psychological Regulation Of Chinese People Participating In Collective Action

What on earth is the non-institutional collective action? How it develops?What kinds of factors will trigger such action? What is the mechanism of theireffects? How to predict and prevent such action? Some issues like these have beenimportant community-wide problems, and the main purpose of this study is to tryto answer these questions one by one by a series of studies in Chinese context.On the basis of the summarization of previous literatures about the conceptand classification of collective action, this study firstly proposed two conceptualframeworks of collective action which happened offline and online separately. Inthe offline framework, the non-institutional collective action was divided intocollective behavior and social movement, and the former was divided into primarycollective behavior, mass behavior and crowd event in accordance with the degreeof the organization and clarity of the objective. In the online framework, thenon-institutional collective action was divided into based on common concernsonline collective action, based on common belief online collective action andbased on common action objective online collective action.On the basis of the two concept frameworks, this study broke the boundariesof disciplines and fields, and integrated the theories about the mechanism of theoccurrence and development of collective action. Then this study attempted toestablish a theory integral model of offline collective action, which contained fourmodules. All four modules could explain the whole process of social movementstog ether, and module1, module2, and module3could explain the every step ofall kinds of collective behavior. The procedures of the collective behaviors,especially the internal mechanisms of political or functional crowd events, whichare organized and have certain goals to some degree, could be interpreted bymodule1and module3together effectively. And the theory integral model ofonline collective action which was built on the same thought and research ideasintegrated the influence factors and their mechanisms of different levels anddevelopment process of online collective action.This study then made further empirical researches to explore the mechanisms of crowd events and social movements and their certain development process.Firstly, a questionnaire survey in the background of Diaoyu Island Event wascarried out, and the internal and external motive variables were brought in toreanalyze the classical duel-path model of social identity and instrumental motivein both online and offline. The result showed that the pathways of national identityand the pathway of the instrumental motives significantly influenced the actiontendency simultaneously and relative independently, which verified the formerresearches and the theoretical hypotheses partly. And the dual pathways convergedto the internal motive that revealed explicitly the essential properties of the twopaths, which extended the past theoretical model. Then the social identity, valueand reasonable assessment variables were brought to reanalyze the classicalduel-path model of efficiency and emotion in both online and offline. The resultdidn’t examine the relative independent role of the two pathways, but examinedthe effect of instrumental path on the emotion path, the result also extend the pasttheoretical model by exploring the mechanism of the emotional path, such as thatemotion’ mediating role and the moderating role of social identity.Secondly, based on the two validation studies and preliminary integralanalysis, this study adopted a different event (Libya event) to further explore theeffect discipline of these main factors on different fields and different degreescollective action. In sum, the general features of Chinese people to make decisionabout collective action was that rational factors boosted by emotional factorshaving decisive effect on intention, which was more prominent in high-risk andhigh cost of collective action. The analysis of online and offline collective actioncombining with the SIDE model suggested that not the characteristics of onlineand offline environment themselves, but the visibility and liability of specificsituation influenced people’s perception and behavioral decision. These resultscould have some inspire for social mobilization, crisis management and such otherpractical work.Based on the two survey researches and the analysis of moderating, thisstudy established the fundamental role of social identity and value in collectiveaction, although this is different from the researches which considered value as anew appending pathway independent from social identity and instrumental motives, this result in line with the general consensus of concept andcharacteristics of value, and proposed that further researches should unify theconcept and measurement of value firstly, and then try to determine the generalmechanism of value through cross-cultural and cross-event studies.Besides, the two survey researcher also suggested that different levels ofsocial identity man influence people’s participating intention through differentpathway. To examine the hypothesis, a experiment in the context of genderdiscrimination in the employment of undergraduate was made, and the threestudies co-validated a new finding, that is the identity with the large socialcategory of event relative through emotional path (both rational path some times)to influence action tendency, the identity with the organization through rationalpath to influence the tendency of collective action. This finding extended formerresearches about multi-identities in the collective action field in the point of thenature of the role of social identity, revealed the mechanism of social identity andits natural relationship with the two path, and provided a new perspective toexplain the contradiction of past researches about the two-path model and otherintegral models. The results could also have some guidance and reference sensefor public management, social order maintenance, improving intergroup relationsand reducing intergroup conflict.In summary, this study injected a little new energy into the collective actionresearches in the aspects of study ideas, theoretical frameworks and empiricalfindings. But the limitations and lack in the model establishing and interpretation,in the sampling of subjects and types of action and other aspects need furtherresearches to improve.