Explaining attitudes toward immigrants from Mainland China in Hong Kong

Abstract

The tension between immigrants from Mainland China and Hong Kong locals has intensified in recent years. Using an original telephone survey that interviewed a representative sample of the Hong Kong population, this article evaluates three major explanations—economic self-interest, sociotropic concerns and psychological dispositions—for anti-immigrant sentiments. The findings suggest that negative attitudes toward immigrants are significantly related to sociotropic concerns. More importantly, such concerns are more prevalent among respondents who have a strong “Hong Konger” identity. Overall, this article presents new evidence for evaluating the relative influence of different factors in the formation of immigration attitudes in the Greater China region.

Keywords

attitudes toward immigrants economic self-interest sociotropic concerns identity Hong Kong

Introduction

Tension between Mainland China and Hong Kong has increased in recent years. As with many intergroup conflicts across the world, immigration policies and immigrants are key sites of contention. Although Hong Kong is part of China, Mainland Chinese residents need to apply for formal immigration permission to settle in Hong Kong. From 1997 to 2017, around 990,000 new arrivals from the Mainland were admitted for family reunification; the immigrants account for approximately 13 percent of the Hong Kong population (Hong Kong Government, 2017a; Census and Statistics Department, 2018). Despite the need to admit more immigrants due to the city’s low fertility rate, Hong Kong locals have increasingly expressed their dissatisfaction toward immigrants from Mainland China.

The tension between Mainland Chinese immigrants and Hong Kong locals has attracted widespread attention not only because it is one of the major obstacles for further economic and social integration between Mainland China and Hong Kong (Law and Lee, 2006; Yew and Kwong, 2014; So, 2010), but also because it takes place amid growing resentment against immigrants and foreign workers in Asia and across the world (Burrett, 2015; Chan et al., 2016; Cuddy et al., 2009; Lee, 2016; Ngan and Chan, 2013). In explaining the conflicts between the two groups, many accounts assert that anti-immigrant attitudes are precipitated by locals’ economic self-interest (Cheng, 2007; Fung, 2004; Garrett, 2013; Lee, 2016). Specifically, these accounts propose that locals whose access to jobs and welfare resources are threatened by competition from immigrants are most likely to reject immigrants. To alleviate resource competition between locals and immigrants, the Hong Kong government has adopted policies that restrict immigrants’ access to welfare resources such as housing and social security, introducing further obstacles to the integration of immigrants (Chui, 2002).

Meanwhile, other accounts highlight the role of psychological factors and sociotropic concerns, such as group identity and threat perception, in explaining the conflicts (Chui, 2002; Kung, 2012; Lee, 2008; Yew and Kwong, 2014; So, 2016). Although Hong Kong locals and immigrants from Mainland China are both officially considered ethnic “Chinese,” due to the long British colonial rule prior to 1997 and the subsequent “one country, two systems” policy, many Hong Kong locals have developed a distinct local identity that is, in the words of Baker (1993: 864), “neither Chinese nor British.” Some observers thus argue that negative attitudes may be more prevalent among people with a strong attachment to Hong Kong or greater pride in being a “Hong Konger.”

Despite their insights, these accounts are somehow limited by their data and research designs, which are mostly characterized by a small number of interviews and critical analysis of media reports. With few exceptions (e.g., Lee et al., 2016),¹ these studies—despite their different emphases—make little attempt to spell out the contradictions between different explanations, with many emphasizing that the conflicts in Hong Kong are complex and multifaceted phenomena. As a result, their conclusions, even if true, offer no direct test to the relative influence of self-interest, sociotropic concerns and psychological processes on the formation of negative attitudes toward immigration, a core subject of debate in the Western literature (Gaikwad and Nellis, 2017; Gorodzeiksy, 2012; Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2013; Mayda, 2006; McLaren and Johnson, 2007; Rustenbach, 2010). Students of immigration attitudes are left with little guidance to evaluate the validity of different explanations and to discern whether, because of their different ethnic compositions and economic conditions, the conflicts in the region are distinctive from those in Europe and the US.

Based on the data of an original telephone poll of 1,014 Hong Kong locals, this article tests hypotheses derived from interest-based, sociotropic and psychological explanations. Standing in contrast to conventional wisdom, our findings suggest that the respondents’ economic self-interest does not fully explain their attitudes toward immigrants. In contrast, we find significant relationships between anti-immigrant sentiments and perceptions that immigrants are a threat to Hong Kong’s culture and overall economy. More importantly, although officially Mainland Chinese immigrants and Hong Kong locals share the same ethnic identity, we find that the locals’ “Hong Konger” identity has significantly moderated the effect of cultural threat perception on threat formation. Altogether, the evidence presented in this article is more consistent with the predictions of sociotropic and psychological explanations. Below we describe the anti-immigrant sentiments in Hong Kong and their major explanations, followed by a systematic analysis of our survey data. The conclusion discusses the implications of our findings to intergroup conflicts in the Greater China Region.

Sources of Mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong

Under the “one country, two systems” arrangement, Hong Kong maintained its own administrative boundaries after it was handed back from Britain to China in 1997. As a Special Administrative Region in China, it has maintained a high level of autonomy in terms of internal affairs such as health care, immigration control and education. Since 1997 there have been four main ways for people from Mainland China to migrate to Hong Kong. The first is through the issuing of one-way permits by the Chinese Government. Under this arrangement, permits are granted to Mainland Chinese applicants whose spouse or children are Hong Kong citizens. Unlike other immigration schemes in Hong Kong, whether or not a permit is issued is entirely determined by the Mainland authorities. Since the purpose of the program is to facilitate family reunion and demonstrate the sovereignty of the central government of China (Siu, 2009), the quality of immigrants is not a crucial criterion in granting citizenship. Consequently, one-way permit holders are generally less educated compared to local citizens (Census and Statistics Department, 2012a). Even so, among the four immigration schemes, the one-way permit scheme is by far the most popular. As previously mentioned, from 1997 to 2017, more than 990,000 new arrivals from the Mainland were admitted for family reunification, representing approximately 13 percent of Hong Kong’s population (Hong Kong Government, 2017a; Census and Statistics Department, 2018). It is likely that the scheme will remain the most important source of population increase in the foreseeable future.

In addition to the one-way permit scheme, the Hong Kong Government has also actively sought highly-skilled Mainland labor and capital through the Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professionals (launched in 2003), the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme (launched in 2006) and the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme (launched in 2003 and suspended in 2015).² As at the end of 2016, 130,103 immigrants in total had been admitted under the three schemes (Hong Kong Government, 2017b). Admission decisions are based on the skill levels and capital investment of the applicants, as well as the needs the labor market in Hong Kong. To protect the interests of local professionals, the schemes for talents generally only admit Mainland immigrants whose skills are not readily available in Hong Kong.

Anti-immigrant sentiment has been on the rise in Hong Kong over the past decade. Although anti-immigrant discussions were mostly found in cyberspace, many Hong Kong locals have also expressed their dissatisfaction in a more confrontational manner. In 2011, for example, an online group in Hong Kong organized a protest to oppose giving equal welfare benefits to new immigrants. This anti-Mainland sentiment has reached a far wider array of social groups than simply the “extreme right.” A survey conducted by The University of Hong Kong in 2014 showed that 24.1 percent of Hong Kong people have “negative” feelings about people from Mainland China (The University of Hong Kong, 2014). Although there are different types of Mainland Chinese immigrants, according to a study on attitudes toward high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants conducted by Lee et al. (2017), the negative sentiment is mostly concentrated on immigrants admitted through one-way permits, who are mostly less educated than the locals. Therefore, the main focus of this study is on people’s attitudes toward low-skilled immigrants. Unsurprisingly, the hostility had an adverse impact on the well-being of the immigrants. In a survey conducted by the Society for Community Organization (2012), around 80 percent of women who have recently immigrated to Hong Kong from Mainland China reported that they have experienced “racial discrimination.”

The conflicts between the locals and the immigrants in 2012 laid a major foundation for subsequent social movements in Hong Kong. The most notable, of course, was the Umbrella Movement in 2014, in which tens of thousands of Hong Kong protesters occupied major roads across the city for 79 days, challenging the limits imposed by the Chinese state on the city’s first universal suffrage Chief Executive election. Partly because of ongoing political intervention from Mainland China and because of the failure of the Hong Kong government to promulgate effective immigration policies, the hostility toward new immigrants has continued to find political expression in localism (or nativism), and dominates Hong Kong’s electoral and movement politics (Chen and Szeto, 2015; Kaeding, 2017).

Competing explanations for intergroup conflicts

The investigation of factors shaping public attitudes to immigrants has drawn inspiration from three major sources: economic self-interest, sociotropic concerns and psychological dispositions. The interest-based explanation emphasizes the social and economic conditions of the local population, which determine its economic self-interest in the face of immigration (Citrin et al., 1990; Sides and Citrin, 2007). Although to date, economic theories have not reached any concrete conclusion on the economic consequences of immigration, many assume that by increasing the overall supply of labor in an economy, immigration (usually low-skilled) can exert a downward pressure on the price of low-cost labor and intensify competition for welfare resources (Billiet et al., 2014; Espenshade and Hempstead, 1996; Hernes and Knudsen, 1992; Raijman and Semyonov, 2004).³ Since economically deprived natives are seen as more vulnerable to immigration than highly-skilled natives, the most simplistic version of the self-interest theory asserts that anti-immigrant sentiments are more likely to be found among natives who are less well-off. Meanwhile, other interest-based theorists propose that natives with a higher level of income may also develop hostile attitudes to low-skilled immigrants because they might, in the long run, increase household tax burdens (Hanson, 2005; Hanson et al., 2007; Facchini and Mayda, 2009; Gerber et al., 2017).⁴ Although these mechanisms affect attitudes in opposite directions, the interest-based theory contends that immigration attitudes of the natives can be predicted by their economic characteristics.

Standing in contrast to the self-interest explanation are sociotropic theories that focus on concerns about the population as a whole. Instead of appealing to the economic conditions of individual natives, proponents of sociotropic theories argue that attitudes to immigration are shaped by social perceptions. In this connection, hostility toward immigrants may be an outcome of perceived cultural threat experienced by the local population. Fearing that immigrants may bring in values, norms and lifestyles that undermine the cultural integrity of the host society, natives develop negative out-group attitudes (Citrin et al., 1997; Sniderman et al., 2004; Raijman and Semyonov, 2004; Riek et al., 2006; Gorodzeiksy, 2012; Schmid and Muldoon, 2015). Similarly, negative attitudes may also be triggered by perceived threats to the overall economy caused by immigrants. Natives may see low-skilled immigrants as a burden on the general economy of the host society, even if the two groups are not in direct competition for welfare resources and job opportunities (Goldstein and Peters, 2014).

Although sociotropic concerns can be economic, it would be a mistake to conflate them with economic self-interest. A large body of literature conducted in the US and Europe has already shown that sociotropic concern and economic self-interest have significantly different effects on immigration attitudes (Sides and Citrin, 2007; McLaren and Johnson, 2007; Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2014). Theoretically, as Mansfield and Mutz (2009) have rightly noted, sociotropic concerns are rooted in perceptions (or misperceptions) derived from collective-level information that cannot be generalized merely from personal experience. Individuals are more likely to attribute responsibility for events that affect solely their self-interest to their own choices or attributes (Iyengar, 1991).

The final perspective focuses on psychological factors. The contact hypothesis suggests that negative public attitude toward immigrants can be reduced by intergroup contact, especially when it takes place on a voluntary basis and in a collaborative environment (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998; McLaren, 2003; Schneider, 2008; Sides and Citrin, 2007). In addition, natives’ feelings of social distance toward immigrants often predict their attitudes. The more that natives want to keep immigrants at a distance, the more likely they are to avoid actual intergroup contact, thus developing anti-immigrant sentiments (Bogardus, 1933; Portes and Rumbaut, 2001). Unsurprisingly, stereotypes held by natives that immigrants are incompetent and untrustworthy have also been found to be associated with anti-immigrant sentiments (Cuddy et al., 2009; Lee and Fiske, 2006). Finally, social identity theory posits that group membership is crucial to the self-esteem of individuals (Tajfel and Turner, 1979; Ceobanu and Escandell, 2008). Therefore, once people have categorized themselves into a cultural group, they are likely to approve positive information about the group and at the same time, belittle out-group members such as immigrants (Monroe et al., 2000). In other words, cultural identity is associated with negative sentiments toward immigrants.

Of course, various factors of these three perspectives may interact with each other in the process of attitude formation. Cultural identity, in particular, may reinforce the effects of sociotropic concerns. Individuals who have a strong group identity may take the collective economic interest and cultural distinctiveness of their group more seriously than those who do not identify with the group, and thus are more likely to be influenced by the possible cultural and economic threats brought about by immigrants.

The relative importance of the three perspectives has long been a subject of disagreement in the Western literature (Bobo, 1988; Espenshade and Hempstead, 1996; Fetzer, 2000; Gorodzeiksy, 2012; Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2013). Over the years, there has been considerable advancement in the conceptualization of intergroup conflicts and the measurement of attitudes. Some studies, for example, have made use of experimental methods to reject some of the key hypotheses that are logically derived from the interest-based theory (Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2010). Unfortunately, as mentioned earlier, similar debates are still in their infancy in Hong Kong and Asia. Existing accounts have remained equivocal on the relative influence of different factors on attitude formation; although traditional accounts building upon media reports of resource competition tend to highlight the role of economic self-interest, recent studies have turned their focus to identity. Yet, regardless of their different emphases, they have not offered evidence that can effectively reject or accept the predictions of the aforementioned perspectives. This is a problem because different explanations imply different policy responses. For example, if contact with immigrants has an independent effect on exclusionary attitudes toward immigrants, then facilitating contact between locals and immigrants would be an effective measure to reduce exclusionary attitudes. To move forward, we must design surveys to systematically gauge individual attitudes toward immigration and test hypotheses logically derived from each of the three explanations.

Hypotheses and methods

We interviewed 1,014 Hong Kong locals through a telephone survey conducted in February 2012. Our respondents were Hong Kong Cantonese speaking residents aged 18 or above. To ensure representativeness, we selected our respondents through random sampling: first, we randomly drew up a list of telephone numbers from the most up-to-date residential phone directories as “seed numbers.” Second, we generated a new set of phone numbers by randomly adding or subtracting one or two from these seed numbers, so as to capture new and unlisted phone numbers. Third, when our call got through, we asked if there were any adults living in that household who met the aforementioned criteria. The one whose next birthday was the soonest was selected for interview. All interviews were conducted by part-time interviewers who were well trained and closely monitored by experienced supervisors under real-time camera surveillance. The response rate was 65.3 percent, which is similar to other phone surveys carried out in Hong Kong (see for example, Lee, 2015).

The dependent variable, attitude to Mainland Chinese immigrants, was measured by the question “Do you think that Hong Kong should allow more new immigrants to settle in the city?” Their responses were captured on a 4-point scale (1 = allow many; 2 = allow some; 3 = allow few; 4 = allow none).⁵ This type of item has been widely adopted in studies conducted in the US and Europe (Dinesen et al., 2014). It is effective in gauging respondents’ negative attitudes to immigrants, if any, because it only requires respondents to express their support toward the state’s immigration policy. In this study, we operationally defined negative attitudes as responses that Hong Kong should allow no or few new immigrants from Mainland China. Although the question does not specify the type of Mainland Chinese immigrants, in the context of Hong Kong, the term “new immigrants” (xin yimin) is commonly associated with low-skilled Mainland Chinese immigrants on one-way permits for family reunion rather than professionals. As Leung (2011) has aptly observed, “new immigrants” in Hong Kong are “defined not by the date of their arrival, but by their failure to participate in a cultural lifestyle.” A survey conducted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong (2016) has also reported that it is more common for Hong Kong locals to encounter Mainland Chinese immigrants who have one-way permits than those who are professionals.

The interest-based theories maintain that economic self-interest, which is determined by one’s perceived social and economic security, shapes attitude formation. Therefore, in our survey we followed Sides and Citrin (2007) and collected information on the respondents’ self-rated personal financial situation and assessment of Hong Kong’s economy. The assessment of Hong Kong’s economy was measured by asking respondents “to what extent you are satisfied or dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy?” (1 = very satisfied; 5 = very dissatisfied). Similarly, their self-rated financial situation was assessed by the question “which of the following descriptions comes closest to how you feel about your household income?” (1 = “living comfortably;” 2 = “coping;” 3 = “finding it difficult;” 4 = “finding it very difficult”). We dichotomized these two variables by recoding somewhat or very unsatisfied as 1 (other values = 0) for assessment of economy and by recoding 3 or 4 as 1 and 1 or 2 as 0 for their self-rated financial situation. Following the logic of interest-based explanations, we hypothesized that respondents who were less satisfied with their financial situation and Hong Kong’s economy were more likely to develop negative attitudes toward immigration. We admit that individuals’ evaluations of their financial situation may fluctuate over time. However, in this study, we were interested in the subjective aspect of self-interest because a common assumption in the literature is that individuals who are economically insecure may worry more about competition from immigrants (Ford and Lymperopoulou, 2017). To complement the limitations of the subjective evaluation, in our analysis, we also examined the relationship between income and immigration attitudes. Consistent with the discussion above, we hypothesized that respondents who report a lower-income are more likely to have negative attitudes toward immigrants.

We did not use respondents’ educational attainment to formulate hypotheses for the interest-based theory. Previous studies have generally assumed that locals’ economic self-interest is determined by their educational attainment such that locals are most likely to compete with and reject immigrants whose skill levels are similar to their own (Scheve and Slaughter, 2001; Mayda, 2006; Hanson et al., 2007; Facchini and Mayda, 2009; Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2010). This is a problem because educational attainment is a noisy predictor when assessing to what degree a native is competing with immigrants (Borjas, 2003; Lee et al., 2017). This is especially true in the labor market, where career outcomes are shaped by a wide range of factors such as work experience. Therefore, instead of using educational attainment to estimate one’s economic calculus, in testing the interest-based theory, we only focused on their self-rated personal financial situation and assessment of Hong Kong’s economy.

In relation to sociotropic explanations, we focused on the perceptions that immigrants were a threat to local cultural integrity and the overall economy. Perceived cultural threat was assessed by two questions adopted from a recent study by Green (2009): “In general, immigrants from the Mainland are good for the cultural life of Hong Kong” and “Hong Kong has become a better place to live because of immigration from the Mainland.” These two items were rated on a 5-point scale ranging from strongly agree (=1) to strongly disagree (=5) and we calculated the sum of these two items as the scores for this variable (alpha = 0.68). Meanwhile, following Green (2009) and Sides and Citrin (2007), perceived economic threat was assessed by asking respondents to rate on a 5-point scale (1 = strongly disagree; 5 = strongly agree) the extent to which they agreed with the following statements: (a) “average wages and salaries are generally brought down by new immigrants coming to live and work here”; (b) “new arrivals who come to live and work here generally harm the economic prospects of Hong Kong”; and (c) “new arrivals who come to live and work here generally take jobs away from locals.” In addition, we also ask respondents to comment on the level of welfare consumption by the immigrants using the question: “on balance, do you think that new immigrants contribute more than they consume, take out more welfare resources than they put in, or contribute and consume at similar rates?” (1 = contribute more; 2 = contribute and consume at similar rates or hard to compare; 3 = consume more). Their level of perceived economic threat was calculated by summing these four items and the resulting score had good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.63). In line with the logic of sociotropic explanations, we hypothesized that respondents who perceived a higher level of cultural and economic threat from the immigrants were more likely to develop negative attitudes toward immigration.

Finally, we assessed four psychological variables, namely, stereotype, social distance, intergroup contact and cultural identity. Stereotypes against immigrants were measured by four questions that asked respondents to express—on a five-point scale (1 = strongly agree; 5 = strongly disagree)—the extent to which they agreed or disagreed that immigrants from the Mainland were: (a) dishonest; (b) hardworking; (c) ignorant; and (d) respectable.⁶ The internal consistency of these four items was acceptable (alpha = 0.64). Social distance was measured by asking respondents to evaluate how much they would mind if a new arrival was married to a close relative or appointed as their boss on a five-point scale ranging from “not mind at all” (1) to “mind a lot” (5). The internal consistency of these items was high (alpha = 0.74). Respondents’ contact with a new arrival was measured by two questions: “Do you have any friends who are new arrivals?” and “Do you have any colleagues at work who are new arrivals?” The items were rated on a three-point scale, with “no, none at all” (0), “yes, a few” (1) and “yes, several” (2). The relatively lower alpha coefficient (0.58) for social contact was expected because contact with colleagues, unlike that with friends, is partly shaped by career concerns. The scores of these three variables were calculated by summing up the corresponding items. In line with the predictions of the psychological explanations, we hypothesized that respondents who held negative stereotypes toward immigrants, had less social contact and larger perceived social distance from them were more likely to develop anti-immigrant sentiments.

We measured cultural identity by asking respondents if they were proud of being a “Hong Konger.” Again, responses were recorded on a five-point scale ranging from 1 = strongly agree to 5 = strongly disagree (Pehrson et al., 2009). As previously mentioned, because cultural and economic threats reflect concerns about the well-being of Hong Kong society in general, we hypothesized that the influence of perceived cultural and economic threats on the formation of negative attitudes would be more powerful among respondents with a strong “Hong Konger” identity.

In addition to the main explanatory variables, we also controlled for perceived numbers of new arrivals living in a neighborhood, as well as a set of basic demographic variables: gender, age in three groups (18–29, 30–59 and 60 or above), marital status (currently married or not), place of birth (Hong Kong or not), occupation (professionals or not) and personal income (HKD40,000 or more).

Table 1 gives the frequency distributions, means and standard deviations for all independent and dependent variables used in the multiple regression analyses. As can be seen in the table, slightly above one-quarter of respondents claimed that Hong Kong should not allow any more new arrivals while over one-third of them reported that Hong Kong should only allow a few new arrivals to settle in the territory. In other words, almost two-thirds of our respondents hold a negative attitude toward new arrivals, suggesting that the anti-Mainland sentiment reaches a far wider spread of social groups than simply the “extreme right.”

Table 1.

Descriptive statistics of variables (N = 982).

	Percentage/ mean (SD)	Cronbach’s alpha
Dependent variables
Negative attitudes to new arrivals	63.54
Should Hong Kong allow more new arrivals
Allow many	0.41
Allow some	32.89
Allow less	35.74
Allow none	27.80
Do not know	3.16
Major independent variables
Dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy	48.27
Poor self-rated financial situation	22.40
Cultural threat	7.34 (1.80)	0.68
Group economic threat	11.85 (2.98)	0.63
Stereotype	10.49 (2.90)	0.64
Social distance	4.74 (2.04)	0.74
Social contact	3.00 (1.23)	0.56
Strong “Hong Konger” identity	69.86
Other demographic and socio-economic variables
Male	39.00
Age
18–29	16.80
30–59	56.82
60+	26.37
Education
Elementary school or below	17.92
High school	51.73
College or higher	30.35
Married	65.07
Born in Hong Kong	66.50
Occupation: Professionals	26.17
Income: HKD 40,000+	6.82
Perceived great number of new arrivals in neighborhood	33.10

SD: standard deviation.

We compared the economic and socio-demographic characteristics in our sample with the general population of Hong Kong, and noted that our sample had a higher female-to-male ratio, was better educated and its members were more likely to work as executives and professionals. Therefore, in our statistical analysis we weighted the sample to match the age and gender characteristics of the Hong Kong population as recorded in the Census (Census and Statistics Department, 2012b).

Data analysis

We first performed bivariate data analysis to compare those who held negative attitudes to new arrivals and those who did not, in terms of their economic and social backgrounds, perceived social and economic threat and psychological attributes. Depending on the type of data, the comparisons were made either by chi-square or t-tests. Table 2 reports the results. We found significant differences between these two groups of respondents in the expected direction. Respondents who expressed negatives attitudes to immigrants were more likely than those who held neutral or positive attitudes to be dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy, have poor self-rated financial circumstance, experience high levels of economic and cultural threat, report a strong “Hong Konger” identity, hold negative stereotypes of immigrants and prefer a greater social distance from them. In short, with the exception of social contact, that is positively correlated with negative attitudes, all explanatory variables covary with the respondents’ attitudes in the expected direction. This reflects the multi-faceted nature of the conflicts between the two groups and explains why existing accounts have diverse interpretations of the phenomenon.

Table 2.

Descriptive statistics for study variables, by attitudes to new arrivals (N = 982).

	Negative attitude to new arrivals (n = 624)	Neutral or positive attitude to new arrivals (n = 358)	Negative vs. positive or neutral
	Percentage/ mean (SD)	Percentage/ mean (SD)	Chi-squared/ t statistic
Major independent variables
Dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy	53.32	42.26	11.4313***
Poor self-rated financial situation	25.42	17.06	9.4372**
Group economic threat	12.55 (2.89)	10.34 (2.55)	12.1953***
Cultural threat	7.85 (1.60)	6.38 (1.80)	13.4098***
Stereotype	11.04 (3.01)	9.24 (2.26)	10.0385***
Social distance	5.06 (2.15)	4.02 (1.56)	8.2020***
Social contact	3.10 (1.13)	2.70 (1.36)	−5.0256***
Strong “Hong Konger” identity	73.75	64.57	9.4130**
Other demographic and socio-economic variables
Male	39.87	55.53	23.0017***
Age			2.1875
18–29	20.60	17.59
30–59	56.31	60.89
60+	23.09	21.52
Education			17.2778***
Elementary school or below	16.92	10.24
High school	52.41	47.51
College or higher	30.68	42.26
Married	60.80	67.89	5.0655*
Born in Hong Kong	71.26	63.42	6.6077*
Occupation: Professionals	27.41	36.48	8.9941**
Income: HKD 40,000+	4.49	12.86	22.9462***
Perceived great number of new arrivals in neighborhood	35.71	30.71	2.6138

Note: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.

SD: standard deviation.

Of course, the differences presented above are not sufficient to make a convincing case for causality. To formally evaluate if each of the three explanations has an independent effect on attitude formation, we need to perform a series of logistic regression analyses. Specifically, in the first model—the base model—only the major independent variables of the three explanations were entered. Then in the second model—the full model—we added the demographic variables and perceived number of new arrivals living in a neighborhood as control variables. Interaction terms of interest are tested in subsequent models one by one.

We identified moderate correlations (r > 0.4) between the independent variables used in the regression analyses. This multi-collinearity problem may lead us to underestimate the significance of some explanations. To address this potential issue, we standardized all continuous variables. Before calculating all regression models, we also checked the variance inflation factor values of the independent variables. All of them (<1.80) were lower than the common cutoff threshold of 3.0 (Miles and Shevlin, 2001). As a result, the multi-collinearity between predictor variables was at an acceptable level.

The results of the logistic regression are presented in Table 3. The base model examines the effects of the major independent variables. The findings lend more support to the sociotropic and psychological theories than to the interest-based theory. Specifically, the effects of the two sociotropic explanatory variables (i.e., perceived economic and cultural threat) on attitude formation are found to be statistically significant (p < 0.001). Furthermore, among the four psychological variables, both social contact and cultural identity have significant effects on attitudes toward immigration. In contrast, in testing the interest-based theories, only poor self-rated financial situation is significantly related to negative attitudes toward immigrants (p < 0.05). In short, the sociotropic and psychological variables seem to have the most robust influence on attitudes toward immigration.

Table 3.

Odds ratios from logistic regression models of negative attitude to new arrivals.

	Base model	Full model
Interest-based explanations
Dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy	1.19	1.16
Poor self-rated financial situation	1.62*	1.47
Sociotropic explanations
Group economic threat	1.17***	1.16***
Cultural threat	1.39***	1.40***
Psychological explanations
Stereotype	1.07	1.06
Social distance	1.06	1.06
Social contact	1.19***	1.18*
Strong “Hong Konger” identity	1.44*	1.46*
Other demographic and socio-economic variables
Male		0.90
Age (reference: 60+)
18–29		1.30
30–59		1.14
Married		0.78
Born in Hong Kong		1.19
Education (reference: College or higher)
Elementary school or below		1.92*
High school		1.34
Occupation: Professionals		0.97
Income: HKD 40,000+		0.49*
Perceived great number of new arrivals in neighborhood		0.90
Pseudo R²	0.1847	0.2008

Note: ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.01, *p < 0.05.

In the second model, we added six demographic variables and perceived number of new arrivals living in a neighborhood as controls. The most noticeable difference between the two models is that the significance of self-rated financial situation diminished after we had controlled for the additional variables. As a result, none of the hypotheses we derived from the interest-based theory could be conclusively accepted.

An alternative measurement of economic self-interest is income. However, as shown in the full model, income is positively associated with negative attitudes toward immigrants. In other words, respondents in the highest income group (HKD40,000 or above) are more likely to reject immigrants. This contradicts the basic hypothesis derived from the interest-based theories, which maintains that locals who are economically more secure or well-off are more likely to welcome immigrants because they are less vulnerable to competition from low-skilled immigrants. Of course, as mentioned, following the logic of the interest-based theory, one may argue that locals with a higher income reject low-skilled immigrants because of tax burden concerns. However, in the context of Hong Kong, the tax-burden explanation should be considered with caution. This is because the government has run a sizeable budget surplus and little to no debt in recent years.⁷ The net impact of immigration on the local tax burden thus remains unclear. We will discuss this in greater detail in the next section.

Education has a significant effect on immigration attitudes. Less-educated respondents (those who have only attended high school) are more likely than the highly educated (those who have at least completed college education) to develop anti-immigrant sentiments (p < 0.05). This is consistent with previous findings that levels of higher education are associated with positive attitudes toward immigrants (Jenssen and Engesbak, 1994). As mentioned earlier, we maintain that educational attainment is not a valid measurement of one’s economic self-interest. Therefore, we will not discuss the association between education and attitude formation here.

Once again, the full model lent more support to the sociotropic explanations, as well as some of the psychological explanations. All of our key sociotropic variables maintained their significance. The same held true for the psychological variables of social contact and cultural identity. These relationships persisted even after we controlled for gender, age, marital status, place of birth, occupation and personal income. As expected, respondents who reported a stronger “Hong Konger” identity showed more negative attitudes toward immigrants. Meanwhile, the positive relationship between social contact and negative attitudes was not consistent with the simplistic application of the social contact theory. A possible explanation for this is that in this study, we did not measure the quality of contact. Research in psychology suggests that negative intergroup contact may increase prejudice (Paolini et al., 2010).

Finally, given the collective nature of sociotropic factors (i.e., perceived cultural and economic threats), we tested whether their effects on immigration attitudes are moderated by the respondents’ identity. Furthermore, as an additional check, we also tested if the respondents’ economic self-interest plays a moderating role on attitude formation. This is because some versions of the interest-based theory maintain that perceptions of group economic threat—despite their collective nature—are essentially shaped by individual self-interest (Hardin, 1995). Consequently, the socio-economic characteristics of individuals may moderate their evaluation of how immigrants threaten Hong Kong’s economy. Altogether, we created three interaction variables between threat perceptions and their potential moderators (i.e., identity, self-rated personal financial situation and assessment of Hong Kong’s economy). Interaction effects were evaluated by using the full model, to which interaction terms were added one by one.

Table 4 reports the results. Partially in line with our expectations, respondents’ cultural identity significantly moderates the effect of cultural threat but not economic threat on attitudes toward immigration. This suggests that group economic concerns, despite their collective nature, are less dependent upon one’s cultural identity. Meanwhile, we ﬁnd that none of the interaction terms between personal socio-economic conditions and threat perceptions is signiﬁcantly different from one.

Table 4.

Odds ratios from logistic regression models with interaction terms of negative attitude to new arrivals.

Full model with Individual Interaction Term
Group economic threat × dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy	1.01
Group economic threat × poor self-rated financial situation		1.01
Group economic threat × strong “Hong Konger” identity			1.08
Cultural threat × strong “Hong Konger” identity				1.26*
Pseudo R²	0.2016	0.2034	0.2020	0.2050

Economic threat and its potential moderators (economic threat, dissatisfied with Hong Kong’s economy, poor self-rated financial situation, education), cultural threat and its potential moderators (cultural threat, strong “Hong Konger” identity, perceived great number of new arrivals in neighborhood), three psychological variables (stereotype, social distance and social contact), and six demographic and socio-economic variables (sex, age, whether married, born in Hong Kong, occupation and income) are controlled for all models.

Note: p < 0.05.

Figure 1 illustrates the interaction effect between cultural threat and identity. It shows that cultural threat exerts a stronger impact on attitude to new arrivals among those who identify themselves as “Hong Kongers” than among those who do not. All else remaining unchanged, respondents who have a strong “Hong Konger” identity are much more likely than others to see immigrants as a threat to the cultural integrity of Hong Kong.

Figure 1.

Interaction between cultural threat and strong “Hong Konger” identity.

Conclusion and discussion

Due to data constraints, until recently, studies on intergroup conflicts in the Greater China region have made no serious attempt to spell out the contradictions between different explanations of anti-immigrant sentiments. This is a problem because, as this article suggests, factors that are widely held as relevant may have limited explanatory power. Economic self-interest is a case in point. It has gained much popularity in explaining anti-immigrant sentiments in Hong Kong, with many assuming that the root cause of negative attitudes lies in competition over economic resources. Inflamed by media reports on the influx of Mainland Chinese pregnant women and students, this line of argument has justified welfare policies that exclude immigrants.

Contrary to the assumption that anti-immigrant sentiments concentrate among locals who are vulnerable to competition induced by immigrants, in our study, respondents who are less satisfied with their financial situation and the economy do not seem to exhibit a particularly high level of hostility. The only socio-economic characteristic that has a significant effect on attitude formation is income of the respondents, which is positively correlated with anti-immigrant attitudes. Since most immigrants from Mainland China are low-skilled, there is no reason to believe that high-income locals develop negative attitudes out of their fear of labor market competition. One may, in support of the self-interest theory, argue that respondents in the high-income group reject immigrants because—due to the progressivity of taxation—they are more likely to be affected by tax burden concerns than their low-income counterparts. However, the relationship between immigration and the local tax burden is never straightforward and is determined by a wide range of factors such as the demographic profile of the receiving country and the institutional mechanism for tax adjustments in response to ﬁscal imbalances (Razin et al., 2002; Rowthorn, 2008; Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2010). For example, immigrants may bring positive fiscal contributions to an aging population by increasing the working age population and fertility rate. Meanwhile, in their study of 11 European countries, Razin and his colleagues (2002) find that low-skill immigration may actually reduce the tax burden and redistribution by reinforcing local support for more stringent welfare policies.

Hong Kong is a case in point. Although immigrants from Mainland China are generally poor, the number of new immigrants receiving Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA), the major safety net for the city, has fallen significantly from 72,800, representing 13 percent of the total number of recipients in 2004, to 17,000 in 2016, representing 5 percent of the total number of recipients (Legislative Council Secretariat, 2017). This was largely caused by a tightening in residence requirements for CSSA by the Hong Kong government from one to seven years in 2004.⁸ The Basic Law, the city’s constitution, requires the Hong Kong government to avoid a fiscal deficit in drawing up the budget (Hong Kong Government, 2016). Seeing a low tax policy as the key to economic success, to date, there is no sign that the government will increase the income tax rate. Therefore, although the perception that immigrants impose a net economic burden is widespread among locals, it is unclear whether such a perception is reflecting their self-interest or the influence of socialization.

Future studies on attitudes toward immigrants may yield more fruit by focusing on the process of socialization and its influence on the formation of various sociotropic concerns. The findings of this article confirm the key hypotheses of the sociotropic explanations and highlight the influence of the “Hong Konger” identity. Clearly, the formation of identity and sociotropic concerns is embedded within wider processes of socialization such as education and nation building. For example, welfare policies that treat immigrants and locals differently may reduce resource competition between the two groups, but may at the same time, reinforce pre-existing intergroup boundaries and identity differences, undermining chances for immigrants to become integrated into the host country in the long run.

Another promising route of research would be to focus on the psychological attributes of individuals. Although this article demonstrated the effects of social contact and identity on attitude formation, due to data constraints, it was not able to determine the quality of contact and how social identity may be shaped by some deeply rooted psychological attributes such as genetics, implicit beliefs and personality. These factors are worth examining as they may guide people’s reactions to external stimuli (Weber et al., 2011; Osborne et al., 2017).

In many ways, the conflict between the immigrants and locals in Hong Kong resembles those taking place in other parts of Asia, such as Mainland China, India and South Korea, where natives and new arrivals from rural areas or a former part of the state share the same ethnic identity (for example, see Gaikwad and Nellis, 2017). The evidence presented in this article suggests that shared ethnicity does not seem to reduce the central role of sociotropic and identity concerns in attitude formation. Ethnicity has long been treated as a primary unit of analysis in studies of migration and intergroup relations in the Western context. This study suggests that even in the absence of clear ethnic differences, equally salient intergroup boundaries may still emerge along lines of class, culture, education and political values. Future research in the Asian setting will lead to a more critical evaluation of the application of ethnicity and should direct more attention to conflicts that take place at the sub-ethnic level.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the Fourth International Conference on Social Policy and Governance Innovation: Innovation in Social Service Delivery on 24 November 2016. The authors thank Ki Nam Jin and Lih-shing Chan for valuable comments and Chuen Ho Sin for research assistance.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council Early Career Scheme (28608715).

¹ However, the study conducted by focuses primarily on attitudes toward welfare distribution, which are theoretically shaped by a very different set of economic concerns.

² The Admission Scheme for Mainland Talents and Professionals is only open to residents of Mainland China and is quota-free. However, to be eligible for the scheme, applicants have to be employed in a job in Hong Kong. In contrast, the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme is a quota-based system, but is open to nationals of most countries. Also, successful applicants are not required to have secured an offer of local employment before their entry to Hong Kong for settlement.

³ Economists have not reached a consensus regarding the economic impact of immigration (Dustmann et al., 2013; Friedberg and Hunt, 1995; Grossman and Helpman, 1994; Jones, 1971). While some studies have found that immigration has an adverse impact on the employment and wage levels of native workers (Borjas, 2003; Brimelow, 2007; Camorata, 2007), others suggest that an increase in the supply of low-skilled labor may not necessarily exert a downward pressure on the salary of low-skilled natives because the supply of goods that rely on low-skilled labor may also increase, thereby absorbing the additional labor force (Hanson and Slaughter, 1999; Rybczynski, 1955). even suggest that by providing the staffing resources required for realizing economies of scale in production, immigrants can generate higher real wages for natives who work in the same industry.

⁴ For a comprehensive review of the interest-based explanations, see Hainmueller and Hiscox, 2010.

⁵ The actual questions are available in the Appendix. Questions mentioning immigrants or new immigrants specifically refer to those from Mainland China.

⁶ Items 2 and 4 were reverse-scored.

⁷ The fiscal reserves at the end of March 2016 stood at approximately USD108.5 billion (Hong Kong Government, 2016).

⁸ The requirement was reverted back to one year following a court ruling in 2013 that the seven-year requirement was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Appendix: Measurement of the main variables

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