Collective resistance intention of migrants to resettlement policies: the role of influential pathways of information sources
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320940387 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Collective resistance
intention of migrants
to resettlement
policies: the role of
influential pathways of
information sources
Yingying Liu
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Zhe Zhu
Jinan University, China
Naim Kapucu
University of Central Florida, USA
Zhengwei Zhu
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Xuesong Guo
Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Abstract
The failure of large-scale resettlement policies has been largely determined by the
collective resistance of residents. For migrants who must leave their original residence
and get resettled, mass media and interpersonal communication are important sources
to get policy information, which affects their attitudes and responses to resettlement
policies. Existing studies have provided two pathways to explain the influencing
mechanism between information sources and people’s collective resistance intention.
Corresponding author:
Zhe Zhu, School of Public Administration and Emergency Management and Crisis Management Research
Center, Jinan University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, P.R.China.
Email: zhuzhe@jnu.edu.cn
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320940387
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2022, Vol. 88(2) 533–551
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
One of these pathways focuses on trust in government and the other highlights per-
ceived benefits. However,it is still unclear how to predict migrants’ collective resistance
intention based on different information sources within these two pathways. By con-
centrating on the policy domain of Chinese resettlement projects, this study aims to
develop an integrated, theoretical framework to explore the causal paths between
information sources and migrants’ collective resistance intention. Based on a survey
of three towns in Ankang, China, we tested the causal mechanism with a structural
equation model. The results demonstrate that the pathway that involves trust in gov-
ernment is more explanatory in illustrating the causal mechanism than the pathway of
perceived benefits, and interpersonal communication yields stronger effects than mass
media in mitigating migrants’ collective resistance intention. The implications for reset-
tlement policy publicity and trust-building in China are discussed.
Points for practitioners
Public communication is a critical competency for public managers. Public managers are
recommended to flexibly apply various information sources to communicate with
migrants in order to eventually mitigate their collective resistance intention by
strengthening their trust in government, as well as their perceived benefits. In
the early stages of policy publicity, a variety of mass media are needed to inform the
migrants of resettlement policies. Then, at the stage of policy implementation, the
primary focus becomes interpersonal communication that offers sufficiently detailed
information. In this regard, local government managers should carry out more pro-
grams that entail face-to-face information sharing to help participants understand the
resettlement policy, and encourage them to explain it to their family and friends.
Keywords
collective resistance intention, perceived benefits, resettlement policies, trust in
government
Introduction
It is not uncommon for large-scale public works to come with displacement, reset-
tlement, and widespread social unrest. Instances of collective resistance triggered
by dams, urban development, and other major infrastructure projects have thus
occurred in India in 2007 (Lupine, 2007), Thailand in 1997 and 2000 (Dash, 2009),
Vietnam in 2010 (Dao, 2016), and elsewhere around the world. In the world’s
densely populated countries, like China, the scale of displacement and resettlement
projects has attracted wide-ranging and sustained attention (Jawando and Samuel,
2020). As government-funded megaprojects have mushroomed in recent decades,
collective resistance around unfair compensation, disrupted livelihoods, and sus-
picions of collusion has consistently surfaced (Xi et al., 2007), though most
534 International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(2)
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