A Study On Rural Residents’ Well-being Under The View Of Social Identity

Rural residents as the largest social group in China, their well-being is very important for the construct of harmonious society. As the progress of urbanization, important social transformation has happened in the village and important changes have happened in the life of rural residents. New rural construction has led to new social groups in the rural residents, such as left-behind peasants, peasant-workers, land-lost peasants. What is the present state and influential factors of rural residents’ well-being? What is the present state of rural residents’social identity and self-esteem? How did the social identity influence the well-being of rural residents? How to improve the well-being of rural residents? The present paper first constructs the integrated model of well-being. Based on this model, we used multiple methods to measure the well-being of rural residents and investigated the external influential factors of well-being such as sex, age, education, income etc and the internal influential factors such as social identity and self-esteem. Finally, we provided suggestions for improving rural residents’ well-being.The qualitative research of rural residents’ well-being has interviewed the rural residents on their thoughts about happiness and life in the village. Based on the interview, the structure of well-being was analyzed and results showed that the well-being of rural residents includes seven structures:(1)beliefs;(2)the harmony and health of the family;(3)income;(4)value realization;(5)leisure;(6)satisfaction of living condition;(7)the hope and confidence for future.The well-being questionnaire of rural residents is based on the depth interview。 By the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, we found that the questionnaire includes five dimensions:(1)the harmony and health of the family;(2)income;(3)leisure of life;(4) the hope and confidence for future;(5) value realization. The five dimensions is consistent with the definition of well-being in this article. The harmony and health of the family and income reflected the life satisfaciton, corresponding to subjective well-being. The leisure of life and the hope and confidence for future reflected the meet of psychological needs, corresponding to psychological well-being. The value realization corresponded to society well-being.We surveyed616rural residents of Shandong province by the questionnaire of rural residents’ well-being and DRM to investigate the current well-being situation of rural residents.We analyzed the influence on well-being of sex, age, marital status, children number, education, income, source of income, region.We found that the well-being of rural residents is on the above of average. The most important factors that influenced the well-being are age, marital status and region. The sex, income, source of income, education, children number have less influence. The well-being of married person is happier than the unmarried, divorced person, and the people whose partner is died. Rural residents from the east and midland of Shandong province are more satisfied than rural residents from west of Shandong province. The older residents are more satisfied than the younger.To investigate the influence of social identity, individual self-esteem and collective self-esteem,616rural residents from Shandong province were surveyed by in-group identification scale, self-esteem scale, collective self-esteem scale and questionaire of rural residents’ well-being. Results showed that the social identity, individual self-esteem, and collective self-esteem of rural residents from Shandong province were a little more than the average. Both the social identity, individual self-esteem, and collective self-esteem could significantly predicts the well-being of rural residents The influence of social identity on well-being of rural residents was partly mediated by self-esteem, that is, the social identify first influenced self-estem of rural residents, self-esteem then influenced the well-being of rural residents.Finally, based on the previous study on the well-being of rural residents, suggestions on how to improve rural residents’well-being were given, which included eight factors, first is to expand the culture of filial piety and construct harmony family; second is to strengthen the construction of leisure culture in the village; third is to improve the quality of marriage of rural residents; forth is to promote the economic development of the West Shandong province; fifth is to increase the income of rural residents; sixth is to improve the self-esteem of rural residents; seventh is to improve the social identity of rural residents; eighth is to improve the social security system on the endowment insurance and medical insurance in the village.