Social mix and wellbeing in Chinese neighbourhoods : multilevel mediation analysis of the domino effects of social capital

Abstract

Housing differentiation and social segregation are burgeoning issues on the agenda of urban researchers and practitioners. Drawing upon public housing as the platform, the concept of social mix has been prevalent as a policy intervention on poverty concentration. The current research follows the trajectory of neighbourhood social mix transformation in urban China and roots its practices in social mix programs implemented in Shenzhen. Echoing the current trends in subjective wellbeing promotion, this doctoral research endeavours to probe whether and how the design of social mix indicators could exert impacts on the subjective wellbeing of subsidized residents, over and above individual attributes. More importantly, it seeks to unravel the domino effects of different forms of social capital as mechanisms mediating the relationships. The point of departure of this thesis was the review of literature on neighbourhood effects. By virtue of sorting out research gaps in relation to the neighbourhood change to social mix, the neighbourhood social mix framework was established in referring to the identification of specific social mix indicators, the outcome of subjective wellbeing versus life chances, and the mechanism of social capital. The theoretical foundation of this research was further enhanced by the reorganization of the social capital theory. Via synthesizing definitions of social capital from both the “cohesion” and “resources” approaches, a comprehensive conceptual model of social capital containing informative and operationalised constructs and forms was formulated. A quantitative research design was adopted to address research questions. Following the introduction of the study setting, the two-staged sampling strategy, the nested data source, and the variables and measures, multilevel analysis was conducted to investigate the impacts of social mix. Research findings revealed that most of the four social mix indicators—mix income, mix tenure, mix ratio, and mix layout, are significant to residents’ subjective wellbeing and intergroup social capital. To further explore the relative merits of each social mix indicator, dominance analysis was carried out and the results suggested that mix income and mix layout are superior to mix tenure and mix ratio in forging the optimal design of socially mixed neighbourhoods. In terms of the mediating roles social capital play between social mix and subjective wellbeing, results from multilevel serial mediation analysis indicated that the initial stage of social capital relies on the occurrence of public familiarity, promising domino effects encompassing subsequent forms of social capital can spontaneously generate causal chains to the outcome. This thesis locates its research contributions in the establishment of the neighbourhood social mix framework and the conceptual model of social capital. Drawing on the advanced multilevel structural equation modelling, empirical evidence from this research highlights a multitude of policy implications for social mix programs. Not only does it suggest what constitutes an “optimal mix” for subjective wellbeing—the design of social mix indicators, it also sheds light on how the “optimal mix” is produced—the exploration of the domino effects of social capital. In doing so, the prescription of social mix becomes more profound for the place-making of socially mixed neighbourhoods.