Chinese People's Self-Construal and Their Social Participation in Beijing Olympic

Games(BOG)

Bing Wang

Institute of SociologyChinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)

Beijing, China

March 2, 2011IRiSS, Stanford University

Contents

I 、 Introduction

II 、 Research hypothesis and design

III 、 Method

IV 、 Result

V 、 Conclusion and Discussion

I 、 Introduction

1 、 Chinese people’s extensive participation in BOG

2 、 Three kinds of social participation

3 、 The boundary-permeated self

2 、 Three kinds of social participation

（ 1 ） authoritative participation

（ 2 ） civil participation

（ 3 ） government-motivated participation

Introduction

government-motivated participation

private benefits vs government’s request

Self construal of Chinese people

3 、 The boundary-permeated self

（ 1 ） Existed theory on the self

（ 2 ） The boundary-permeated self

Existed theory on the self

Independent self and interdependent self (Markus & Kitayama ,1991 ）

Self-contained individualism and ensembled individualism (Sampson , 1988 )

“The differential mode of associations” (Fei, 1947/1992)

The boundary-permeated self

Figure 1 The boundary-permeated self

a structure of concentric circles

the permeability of the boundary

higher or lower on moral development level

The boundary-permeated self

include or exclude other people

self as an agent

The boundary-permeated self

The public

The private

the family self

the national self

the world self

Figure 2 A three-level representation of the boundary-permeated self

II 、 Research hypothesis and design

1 、 Hypothesis

2 、 Research design

(1 ） For individuals with high permeable boundary, the extent of participation before and during BOG would depend on their level

of patriotic sentiment.

(2) For individuals with low permeable boundary, the level of patriotism would not affect their participation in the BOG.

1 、 Research hypothesis

2 、 Research Design

Patriotic sentimentPatriotic

sentiment

The boundary-permeated self

High vs low

The boundary-permeated self

High vs low

Participation

More vs less

Participation

More vs less

（ 1 ） Independent variable: Patriotism

（ 2 ） Moderate variable ： the boundary-permeated self

（ 3 ） Dependent variables ： two attitude indicators: individual focus / national focus one behavior indicator: BOG Participation

III 、 Method

1 、 Respondents

2 、 Measurement

3 、 Research procedure

Quota sampling

1 、 Respondents

1 、 The patriotism scale ( = .88)

2 、 The boundary-permeated self scale ( = .84)

3 、 The involvement scale

--The BOG individual focus scale (= .79)

--The BOG national focus scale ( = .83)

--The BOG participation scale ( = .89)

Measures 2 、 Measurement

1 、 The patriotism scale(example)

Seeing that the Chinese athletes won a lot of gold medals in this Olympic Games made me feel proud of the Chinese people.

I felt extremely proud when I saw our national flag was raised in the Olympic stadiums.

2 、 The boundary-permeated self scale(example)

It is sometimes necessary to think about personal gains (or losses) when conducting public business.

It is sometimes difficult to distinguish between public and private matters.

3 、 The BOG individual focus scale（ example）

(to involve into BOG, since I can……)

find an opportunity to make money

get close to some celebrities

3 、 The BOG national focus scale（ example）

(to involve into BOG, since I can……)

contribute to a big event of China

cheer for the Chinese athletes in close distance on sites

The BOG participation scale（ example）

Olympic volunteering services organized by the place where you work

Olympic volunteering services organized by the community

3 、 Research procedure—training the interviewers

3 、 Research procedure—one of the survey communities

3 、 Research procedure—knocking the respondents’ door

3 、 Research procedure—interviewing

3 、 Research procedure—checking the questionnaires

IV 、 Result （ 1）

IV 、 Result （ 2）

Figure 3. The interaction effects of patriotism and boundary-permeated self on BOG national focus and BOG participation.

IV 、 Result （ 3）

Summary of results(1)

Patriotism correlates positively with BOG national focus and BOG participation behavior, but it does not correlate with BOG individual focus

For respondents with high permeability of self boundary, their BOG national focus and BOG participation behavior become more positive as their patriotism increased

Summary of results(2)

However, for respondents with low permeability of self boundary, their BOG participation behavior does not significantly increase as a function of patriotism, although their national focus does.

Thus, the boundary-permeated self could moderate the links between patriotism and BOG national focus and participation.

V 、 Conclusion and Discussion

Main conclusion

The practical implication

The theoretical implication

Main conclusion

Beijing Olympic Games has evoked extensive social participation among Chinese people

This social participation is a kind of government-motivated participation

This kind of government-motivated partipation is mainly based on the self-construal of Chinese people, ie “the boundary-permeated self”

The boundary-permeated self could moderate the links between patriotism and BOG national focus and participation.

The practical implication

The strategy for Chinese government in mobilizing people

The theoretical implication

Revealing the psychological mechanism of government-motivated participation among Chinese people

Conducting further theoretical thinking related with the

boundary-permeated self, interdependent self, and relational self

Thank All of You for Your Attention ！