A Study On Intercultural Contact Factors And Acculturation

Commercial and cultural exchanges between China and Africa can be dated back to the Tang and Song dynasties,but the large flow of Africans doing business in Southeast Asian countries to China starts from the 1990 s when the Asian financial crisis broke out.As the business and logistics center of south China,Guangzhou enjoys a complete chain of the light manufacturing industry.Coupled with a strong business atmosphere and convenient foreign trade in the Pearl River Delta region,Guangzhou become a heaven for doing business.The years from 1997 to 2008 had witnessed the peak of the number of African merchants swarming to Guangzhou,aiming to make a fortune.Over these years,research concerning this special group mainly focuses on cultural conflicts or acculturation strategies,the psychological and sociocultural adaptation of African merchants in Guangzhou has not been given due attention.In view of this,this paper attempts to explore the relationship between the acculturation status of African merchants in Guangzhou and intercultural contact factors under the theoretical framework of Colleen Ward's two-dimension model of acculturation.By reviewing the previous literature,6 intercultural contact factors,including ethnic identity,perceived discrimination,social support,social interaction,and language proficiency,and length of stay,were selected for correlation evaluations with the two acculturation dimensions.This paper adopted a qualitative study of questionnaires to identity how selected intercultural contact factors are correlated with psychological and sociocultural adaptation.A number of scales used in previous research were referred or modified,including Well-being Questionnaire(W-BQ12),Self-esteem Inventory(SEI),Sociocultural Adaptation Scale(SCAS),Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measurement(MEIM),Everyday Discrimination Scale(EDS),Social Support Index(SSI),Social Interaction Scale(SIS),and the Communication Scale(CS).Altogether 105 questionnaires were issued and 55 are valid for the final analysis.Descriptive and Pearson correlation analyses were done through SPSS 25.0.Major findings are summarized as follows: Firstly,psychological and sociocultural adaptation situations of African merchants in Guangzhou are both moderately well.Secondly,psychological adaptation of African merchants was proved to be correlated with 5 intercultural contact factors.Specifically,the psychological adaptation has a negative correlation with perceived discrimination,and a positive correlation with ethnic identity,social support,social interaction and language use and proficiency.The correlation strength from high to low is ranked as perceived discrimination,ethnic identity,social interaction,social support and language use and proficiency.Thirdly,the sociocultural adaptation of African merchants was proved to be correlated with 5 intercultural contact factors.To elaborate,sociocultural adaptation is negatively correlated with perceived discrimination,positively correlated with social support,social interaction,language use and proficiency and length of stay,and show no correlation with ethnic identity.The correlation strength from high to low is ranked as language use and proficiency,perceived discrimination,social interaction,length of stay and social support.Fourthly,correlation analysis proved that outgroup social support has a stronger positive correlation with both psychological and sociocultural adaptation than ingroup social support,which is the main source of social support for African merchants.What's more,the overlapping and strength differences of correlations show that the two acculturation dimensions of African merchants are distinct and interrelated,thus verified the Colleen Ward's two-dimension acculturation model in the group of African merchants in Guangzhou.Finally,based on the research findings,some constructive suggestions were put forward for local government in managing or policy-making process to better the acculturation status of African merchants and limitations of this paper were also pointed out.