Welfare or politics? A survey experiment of political discontent and support for redistribution in Hong Kong

Published date01 February 2020
Date01 February 2020
DOI10.1177/0263395719837867
Subject MatterArticles
/tmp/tmp-17oti9LJbwohQ5/input
837867POL0010.1177/0263395719837867PoliticsWong
research-article2019
Article
Politics
2020, Vol. 40(1) 70 –89
Welfare or politics? A survey
© The Author(s) 2019
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experiment of political
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395719837867
DOI: 10.1177/0263395719837867
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discontent and support for
redistribution in Hong Kong

Mathew YH Wong
Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Abstract
This study examines support for redistribution in the developed economy of Hong Kong from
three theoretical perspectives: self-interest, ideology, and social affinity. The analysis uses a
between-subjects randomized vignette experiment to explore the interplay between welfare and
politics; in particular, it addresses whether people express opposition to a welfare policy to convey
political discontent even if they otherwise support the policy. Drawing on a survey of university
students (N = 1245), the study finds that self-interest and ideology, and specifically perceptions of
social mobility and individual responsibility, are strong predictors of support for redistribution.
The vignette experiment provides evidence that politics indeed spills over into support for
welfare policies. Respondents expressed less support for public housing if cued that the policy
was associated with the government and were already dissatisfied with political leadership. The
findings have implications for research on political support for redistribution and welfare policies.
Keywords
Hong Kong, political dissatisfaction, support for redistribution, survey experiment, welfare
policies
Received: 8th September 2018; Revised version received: 8th February 2019; Accepted: 16th February 2019
This article examines predictors of individual support for redistribution and welfare poli-
cies. Scholars have assessed how economic, political, sociological, and psychological
factors affect one’s support of economic redistribution. This study analyses the relation-
ship between policy support among young people in Hong Kong and three sets of factors:
self-interest (class and income), ideology, and social affinity. The analysis not only builds
on the literature but also introduces several new influences that had not been examined
for the case of Hong Kong, including post-materialism, utilitarian familism, attitudes
towards immigrants, and social trust. For a comprehensive understanding of how these
Corresponding author:
Mathew YH Wong, Department of Social Sciences, Education University of Hong Kong (EduHK), Tai Po,
Hong Kong.
Email: myhwong@eduhk.hk

Wong
71
factors affect policy opinion, the analysis also uses several measures for individuals’
redistributive preferences.
Although a significant body of literature has analysed a range of factors affecting sup-
port for welfare, its relationship with political satisfaction remains largely unexplored. In
general, there is a lack of research on the effect of economic evaluations and political
ideology on welfare preferences; rarer still is work that assesses how such policy prefer-
ences relate to dissatisfaction with the government. While it is likely that discontent with
governing bodies will have a negative influence on policy preferences, the precise rela-
tionship between the two is difficult to ascertain. This study addresses this question
through a vignette treatment. The results show that individuals’ support for a given policy
changes according to his or her assessment of the government and whether the policy is
perceived to be associated with the government. In this light, the study adds to discus-
sions of how public finances (tax systems and social spending) inspire collective action,
such as protests (e.g. Martin and Gabay, 2013), and how welfare policies are used to
pacify popular grievances in authoritarian regimes (e.g. Boix and Svolik, 2013; Gandhi
and Przeworski, 2007). A well-implemented welfare policy generally increases support
for an incumbent government, but the reverse may also hold. This study thus addresses
whether people oppose policies to express their political discontent, regardless of the
policy’s content or impact.
As ‘the world’s freest economy’,1 the Hong Kong government has traditionally
avoided economic intervention, with low taxes and low public spending. The residual
welfare state has also undergone significant retrenchment in recent decades due to the
cumulative pressures of globalization and demographic change (Lee, 2005). In a recent
survey of the general population, however, Wu and Chou (2017) found that a majority of
respondents supported greater redistribution, especially given the dramatic economic
recovery and an ample budget surplus, but did not assess how political factors might
impact support for welfare policies. This relationship is particularly important in view of
recent political turbulence, including the Umbrella Movement protests, which were
attended by a disproportionately large number of young people. Existing studies discuss
the dissatisfaction and unhappiness of Hong Kong’s youth (e.g. Chiu and Wong, 2018;
Wong et al., 2017), but the source of this discontent is not well understood beyond cor-
relations. For example, while the Umbrella Movement’s demands were generally politi-
cal, the impetus for the protests likely had an economic dimension (Wong, 2017). Youth
might express themselves politically because of economic concerns, but we lack a con-
ceptual language to understand how they overlap and interact. This research not only
examines the political predictors of support for welfare and redistribution but it also
offers a novel way to understand youth discontent in Hong Kong.
The remainder of this article is organized as follows. I begin with a review of the litera-
ture on individual preferences for redistribution. This is followed by a discussion of the
relationship between welfare and politics, and how the latter can spill over into the for-
mer. The following section introduces the study’s methods, including the survey and
experimental design. The next section presents results. The article concludes with a dis-
cussion of the findings and their implications.
Explaining support for welfare
There are two general approaches to explaining individuals’ preference for economic redis-
tribution. On the one hand, a significant body of research analyses how macro-level factors

72
Politics 40(1)
influence aggregate support for welfare policies, from ethnic composition (Alesina and
Glaeser, 2004) to welfare regimes (Esping-Andersen, 1990), cultural background and val-
ues (Norris and Inglehart, 2004), and economic cycles (e.g. employment rates; Blekesaune,
2007). On the other hand, researchers have also sought to explain how individual-level fac-
tors affect political preference. In general, the findings from this literature generally fall into
three categories of explanation: self-interest, ideology, and social affinity.
The self-interest explanation suggests that individuals are rational when they seek to
maximize their utility. In the context of support for redistribution or welfare policies, this
would mean that those who stand to gain the most from welfare are most likely to support
greater redistribution. For example, research has shown that the unemployed, elderly, or
those from lower-class backgrounds, all of whom would benefit from welfare policies,
show stronger levels of support (Busemeyer et al., 2009; Svallfors, 2004). The ideology
explanation holds that one’s beliefs about society and the economic system determine one’s
support for welfare policies, regardless of material considerations. For example, beliefs
about why people are poor (e.g. trapped and unlucky vs laziness) or why people succeed
(class advantage vs individual talent) would impact one’s support for economic redistribu-
tion (Alesina and Glaeser, 2004; Linos and West, 2003). Wu and Chou (2017) found that
social values – in particular, the perception that poverty is a social problem rather than an
individual issue – can help to explain support for welfare policies in Hong Kong.
Finally, the social affinity argument explains welfare attitudes according to a society’s
intergroup dynamics. People tend to favour members of their own group (in-group) and
perceive others negatively (out-group). According to this perspective, support for welfare
should increase when its recipients come from the same ethnic group as a subject, and
vice versa when perceived to be from an out-group (Harell et al., 2016). Prejudice towards
minorities is also found to correlate negatively with welfare support among majority
groups, which can be attributed to racialized stereotypes about the ‘deservingness’ of the
minority group (e.g. Gilens, 2000). For example, Reeskens and Van Oorschot (2012)
found that higher levels of immigration correlate with support for policies that limit
immigrants’ access to welfare benefits.
Welfare or politics?
The provision of welfare plays a major role in politics as implied in Lasswell’s definition
of politics as ‘who gets what, when, how’. Democratic politicians redistribute benefits to
shore up electoral support (e.g. Lake and Baum, 2001), whereas authoritarian leaders
neutralize internal social threats by redistributing benefits (Boix and Svolik, 2013; Gandhi
and Przeworski, 2007). As a rule of thumb, authoritarian regimes tend to use welfare to
suppress political participation (e.g. protest or rebellion),...

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