Emerging Adulthood in Hong Kong
How emerging adults, broadly referring to those aged from 18 to 29 years old, fare in civic engagement, as compared with other adults is the focus of the present work. The work takes civic engagement to comprise prosociality in civil society, sustaining social institutions, and challenging institutions. Delineating a theoretical framework based on voluntaristic theory, the work expects to find differences in civic engagement due to the voluntaristic mechanisms of power realization, utilitarian optimization, normative conformity, and idealistic consistency maintenance in the emerging adult, as compared with the other. Using survey data from 25,878 Chinese adults in Hong Kong, the work illustrates that the emerging adult displayed a greater challenge to social institution, notably in terms of radicalism and occupying protest, than did the other. Moreover, the emerging adult is less prosocial in terms in community participation. Meanwhile, the emerging adult is not consistently different from the other in sustaining social institutions. The findings are crucial, given the control various background characteristics, including age, education, marriage, and employment. These findings are therefore useful for illustrating social forces postulated in voluntaristic theory for explaining civic engagement.
Chau-kiu Cheung is Associate Professor of Applied Social Sciences at the City University of Hong Kong.
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Emerging Adulthood in Hong Kong
Social Forces and Civic Engagement
Chau-kiu Cheung
First published 2018
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2018 Chau-kiu Cheung
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cheung, Chau-kiu, author.
Title: Emerging adulthood in Hong Kong : social forces and civic engagement / Chau-kiu Cheung.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; NewYork, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge contemporary China series | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020538 | ISBN 9781138214040 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315446882 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Young adultsChinaHong KongSocial conditions. | AdulthoodChinaHong Kong. | Political participationChinaHong Kong.
Classification: LCC HQ799.8.C52 H635 2018 | DDC 305.242095125dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020538
ISBN: 978-1-138-21404-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-44688-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Galliard
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
The work benefits variously from a number of research grants (CityU #9041814 (GRF #141412), CityU #7008171, CityU #9610241, CityU #7008075, CityU #9610168, CityU #9610110. CityU #9610068). Moreover, the work materializes thanks to Kwan-kwok Leung, Xiaowei Zang, T. Wing Lo, Raymond Kwok-hong Chan, Tak-yan Lee, Ping Kwong Kam, Alice Ming-lin Chong, and other advisors or associates. Nonetheless, the author bears the sole responsibility for shortcomings in the work.
Emerging adulthood, civic engagement, and more crucially their relationship are of concern in this theoretical and empirical investigation because of their significance and uncertainty. Briefly, emerging adulthood refers to the age range from 18 to 29 years, and civic engagement refers to attitudinal and behavioral involvement in civic life, covering prosociality, institutional support, civil disobedience, protest, and radicalism. The thrust of this work is in the investigation of differences in civic engagement between the emergent adult and the older one. Essentially, the investigation involves statistical analyses that control for age and other background characteristics. The investigation also necessarily adduces theoretical insights to enhance its plausibility.
The significance of the investigation into the relationship or exactly the effect of emerging adulthood on civic engagement rests on the following. In the first place, the investigation achieves predictive significance for envisioning the impacts of emerging adulthood on society beyond civic engagement. This is because civic engagement wields immense impacts on society through collective, communal, and political actions. Moreover, the investigation embraces evaluative significance for assessing how much the emergent adult is civic-minded, prosocial, moral, capable, trustworthy, and thereby adequate to be responsible for society relative to the older citizen. This investigation thereby gauges the benevolent and adverse impacts of the emerging adult. In addition, the investigation upholds ameliorative significance for elucidating how to raise the benevolent impacts and prevent the adverse impacts of emerging adulthood. The investigation explores conditions for the impacts. What is more, the investigation merits revelatory significance for tapping the impacts of globalization, individualization, and urbanization that underlie the consolidation of emerging adulthood. This investigation shows how social change impinges on civic engagement. Besides, the investigation addresses theoretical significance for theorizing emerging adulthood and its impacts. The investigation clarifies the value of emerging adulthood as a consequential factor and unfolds mechanisms for its impacts.
