Research On The Micro-mechanism And Influencing Factors Of Social Trust During The Transformation Period In China

Social trust is a crucial component of social capital,considered as a significant foundation for social networks and norms,and an indispensable driver for modern society.Social trust is also an important research topic in public economics,behavioral economics,labor economics,cultural economics and social economics.Social trust plays an esstential role in interpersonal relationships.It affects people's economic participation in social life and reflects social cohesion and social solidarity to some extent.Since the reform and opening up,China's economy has achieved a rapid growth and people's lives have been gradually improved,however,the social trust of Chinese residents has become a big challenge.In general,the social trust is not high,and the level of social trust for residents of different social stratas display significant heterogeneity.Under the guidance and practice of today's establishment of socialist core values,the construction of social trust has become a crucial issue.The report of the 19 th National Congress clearly pointed out: "As socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era,the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved.What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life".The crisis of social trust is an important manifestation of the contradiction of resource inequality in social life.As the overall social trust of Chinese residents continues to be low,the transaction costs are increased,which is likely to cause many economic problems and social contradictions.Therefore,the importance of social trust and the lack of social trust for residents also require more attention from the academia.This research has important theoretical and practical significance.At present,China is facing a new period of economic and social transformation,both the economic and social development even the population structure are facing many challenges: such as,the continuous growth of migrants in economically developed areas,the unbalanced allocation of higher education resources among regions,and the family population structure change caused by the release of fertility willingness under the background of the comprehensive Two-Children policy Change.The imbalance in the process of economic and social development manifests itself in the transformation of population structure and social structure.Starting from the basic principles of economics,we suspect that the imbalance in the process of economic and social development is mainly due to the scarcity and competition of social and economic resources,resulting in "differentiation" of social cognition,and brings about differences in social trust among residents of different social status,urban and rural identity,family background and social level.In view of the above realistic background,this thesis builds a link between the two important economic concepts of social inequality and social trust,and mainly studies three typical social imbalance phenomena and the changes of social trust level of residents.The main research topics of this thesis is described in the following aspects:Firstly,focusing on the background of economic and social transition along with China's economic and social development,this thesis tries to differentiate the effect of the three types of economic and social imbalance phenomena on individuals' social trust,i.e.the experience of migration,the unbalanced distribution of higher education resources and the structure of family population.Secondly,this thesis examines the impact of migration experience on their social trust.We investigate the effect using micro-survey data.Besides the baseline effect,we further study the temporal and spatial heterogeneity of the above relationships,and discuss the mechanism of migration on social trust from the perspective of short-term personal experience and social integration,this thesis discusses the micro-mechanism of the phenomenon of migration on social trust,and considers the contingency of individual relocation experience,education level difference and the change of Hukou registered residence.Thirdly,this thesis explores the cognitive transmission effect of unbalanced allocation of higher education resources among regions on individuals' social trust.Specifically,on the one hand,this thesis combines micro-survey data and macro-data to study whether the unbalanced development of trans-provincial higher education will reduce the level of social trust of residents,and whether the effects vary across different age,education level,social class and urban-rural area.On the other hand,based on the quasi-natural experiment of the enrollment expansion policy in 1999 and the unequal benefits of urban and rural residents' higher education brought about by the enrollment expansion policy in universities,this thesis explores whether the enrollment expansion policy in universities can not only popularize higher education,but also intensify the unequal allocation of higher education resources between urban and rural areas.Thus,the unequal distribution between urban and rural areas reduces the individual social trust.Fourthly,this thesis analyzes the impact of the differences in family population structure on social trust.The differences in quantity of siblings represent the distribution and competition of family resources under the different family backgrounds,which results in the difference of residents' social trust.We also examine whether this effect is influenced by family preferences for childbearing and whether there is heterogeneity between urban and rural areas and has gender difference,as well as the mechanism of the level of urban size in which residents live.This thesis is divided into seven chapters.The specific content of each chapter is described as follows:Chapter 1: Introduction.This chapter introduces the research background and motivation of the thesis,then introduces the research ideas and framework as well as the arrangement of each chapter,and finally elaborates the main innovations and shortcomings of this thesis.Chapter 2: An economic analysis of the micro mechanism and influence factors of social trust in the transition period of China.This chapter mainly introduces and explains the status of social trust research in economic research,and explains the conceptual connotation and extension of three dimensional variables of unbalance in the process of economic and social development,as well as the logical relationship of social inequality affecting residents' social trust.Chapter 3: Literature review.Firstly,this chapter systematically summarizes the concept,classification and measurement of social capital and social trust in various disciplines,summarizes the importance of social trust in economics research,and reviews the macro and micro factors affecting social trust,such as regional development level,individual characteristics,game,and income inequality.Secondly,it reviews the concept and research of social capital.it introduces the related research on the impact of imbalanced factors on social trust in the period of economic and social transformation in China.Thirdly,from the three specific perspectives of migration problem,resource allocation of higher education and difference of family population structure,this chapter summarizes the research on possible social trust mechanism and influencing factors under the background of economic and social transition period.Finally,all the above contents are summarized and commented.Chapter 4: Investigation on the relationship between migration experience and social trust.This chapter uses the data of the 2014 China Labor Force Dynamic Survey(CLDS)to examine the impact of migration experience on social trust.A comparative study was made on the degree of social trust between the individuals who had migration experience and those who had not migrated.It also studies whether the social trust status of groups with migration experience presents heterogeneity in time and space.In addition,this chapter further considers the difference of the influence of relocation and Hukou migration on social trust,as well as the heterogeneity of educational and cultural differences among the migrants.Finally,this chapter discusses the influence mechanism of migration experience on social trust from the perspectives of social integration,language types and their superposition.Chapter 5: Investigation on the relationship between unbalanced allocation of higher education resources and social trust.This chapter still mainly uses the data of the China Labor Force Dynamic Survey(CLDS)in 2014,and combines with the relevant data of provincial higher education,to study the impact of inequality of higher education opportunities and resources in different regions on residents' social trust.Specifically,this chapter studies whether the unbalanced development of inter-provincial higher education will reduce the level of social trust of residents,and whether this role shows differences in age,education level,social class and urban and rural areas.Furthermore,this chapter takes the enrollment expansion policy of colleges and universities issued in 1999 as a quasi-natural experiment to study the impact of the unbalanced allocation of higher education resourse between urban and rural areas brought about by the enrollment expansion policy of colleges and universities on social trust.To find out whether the policy of enlarging enrollment in colleges and universities has aggravated the inequality of higher education opportunities between urban and rural areas while popularizing higher education,thus reducing the social trust of residents.Chapter 6: Investigation on the relationship between family population structure and social trust.This chapter takes the differences of the existence and quantitative characteristics of siblings as an issue to explain the differences of residents' social trust under the background of the differences of family population structure from the perspective of family resource competition.We further study whether the different characteristics of siblings affect the degree of social trust with the heterogeneity of urban and rural areas and has gender difference.More specifically,we test whether they are influenced by family fertility preferences,and the marginal role of urban-rural differences and gender differences,and also the mechanism role of urban level in the relationship between the number of siblings within the family and individual social trust.Chapter 7: Conclusions and further work.Based on the research and elaboration of the above chapters,this chapter summarizes the main findings in each chapter,and puts forward corresponding policy recommendations on how to enhance the social trust and social equity of Chinese residents,and raises the shortcomings of this thesis and explore the future prospects of this thesis.The main conclusions of this thesis are summarized as follows:Firstly,the social trust level of individuals with migration experience is lower than that of individuals without migration experience.The degree of residential isolation and social integration measured by the proportion of people inside and outside the community,and whether the language types used after work are the regional and cultural differences measured by non-local dialects are the important mechanism changes of the relationship between them.Migration experience displays a heterogeneous negative impact on both general trust and neighborhood trust across time.In the short term,migration experience has no significant impact on the general trust of society.However,with the increase of migration time,the level of neighborhood trust has increased for migrants.The spatial heterogeneity analysis of migration shows that the social trust of the inter-provincial migrants is the lowest comparing with the inter-city migrants and inter-county migrants.The experience of migration has a negative impact on social trust which the explanatory mechanism is related to the social integration between the migrants and local residents,and whether the migrants can break through the language barrier.Regarding to the robustness test of the migrant's relocation experience and Hukou migration experience,we find that the migrants with the relocation experience has improved their distrust of their neighbors,and the migrants without the relocation experience has more distrust of their neighbors.According to the robustness test of social trust comparison between high-skilled migrants and low-skilled migrants,this thesis finds that the social trust of low-skilled migrants is worse.Related to the Hukou migration experience,we find that the migrants separated from their Hukou has lower social trust degree.Secondly,the unbalanced allocation of higher education resources in different provinces directly leads to the difference in the opportunity and quality of higher education.The richer and centralized higher education resources,the higher the level of social trust of residents.On the contrary,the scarcer the resources of higher education,the lower the level of social trust of residents.In addition,as a quasi-natural experiment in the development of higher education and the reform of education system in China,the policy of university enrollment expansion aims at increasing the supply of higher education resources,and improving the education level of residents,thus improving the overall national quality.However,in the actual implementation process,the educational gap between urban and rural areas has been enlarged.The difference in the cost of access to higher education resources among the residents has objectively caused inequality in higher education and reduced the level of social trust among the residents of rural area.Thirdly,the level of social trust of individuals with siblings of original families is significantly lower than that of individuals without siblings.In particular,the characteristics of siblings affect social trust,showing significant heterogeneity across urban and rural areas and across genders.Compared with rural residents,the social trust of urban residents is affected stronger by the number of siblings;Compared with female residents,the social trust of male residents is affected larger by the number of siblings.By examining the mechanism of city level,it is found that the scarcity of public resources and fierce competition on behalf of big cities have a negative effect on the formation of males' social trust.The contributions of this thesis are mainly embodied in the innovation of topic perspective,research content and variable indicators,and are summarized as follows:Firstly,the innovation of the perspective of topic selection.This thesis constructs a systematic theoretical framework of factors affecting residents' social trust in the context of China's economic transition period.It also proceeds from the unique perspective of combining micro-individual emotional cognition research with macro-economic and social background research instead of separated research in the past,and systemically investigate the micro-mechanism and the crucial factors of social trust.Secondly,the innovation of research content.This thesis combines the data of China's dynamic labor force survey,a nationally representative micro-survey database and other relevant macro-economic datasets,respectively,from the social cognitive differences caused by migration experience,the educational resource perception differences caused by the unbalanced allocation of higher education resources,and the siblings' resource competition caused by the differences of family population structure.This thesis studies the influence of migration experience,resource allocation of higher education and family population structure on residents' social trust,investigates the change of individual social trust level and its evolution mechanism,and explores the micro-impact mechanism of residents' social trust,so as to improve the residents' social trust.This thesis also provides a theoretical and empirical evidence for the specific implementation of measures to enhance residents' social trust.Thirdly,the innovation of variable indicators.Based on the existing literature and according to the three influencing major factors of economic and social imbalance,this thesis constructs several variables,such as the indicators of migration experience,resource imbalance of higher education and the number of siblings to capture the social imbalance of the economic transition period.The systematic description of social inequality provides a new way of thinking in the construction and the application of the indicators.