Research On Motivation System Of Chinese Online Political Participation

Broad and active political participation is a major feature of "good governance".Expanding the people’s orderly political participation has always been an important part of China’s socialist democracy construction.At digital age,the combination of modern communication technology and democratic politics has provided the public with a variety of channels for participation.The reconstructed communication characteristics,as well as the enhanced awareness of public spirit,make online political participation an irresistible trend.Currently,on one hand,governments are accelerating the promotion of e-government projects,creating various ways of online political participation to facilitate the public’s participation.One the other hand,once public events outburst,intensive online discussions flocked,forcing the government to answer and resolve related issues,which caused great pressure on the authorities.How to "enable the people’s broad,continuous,and intensive participation" and guide it into a rationally and orderly manner is a key issue for the party and government.This study starts from the realistic question-why and how does the public take online political participation? Based on a typological analysis of online political participation,this study comprehensively uses self-determination theory,UTAUT and political system theory as analysis tools,and adopts literature research,system analysis,survey research,case research and comparative research as methods to analyze the elements,structure and function of the online political participation motivation system.On this basis,809 valid questionnaires were collected to verify the dynamic mechanism of the motivation system so as to summarize the pattern of the occurrence and development of online political participation.Two cases-"Chongqing bus falling incident" and "Vaccine incident"-were selected to further reveal the operating mechanism of the motivation system.Based on these analyses,suggestions are put forward to guide and expand the public’s orderly online political participation.The main conclusions are as follows: First,Chinese online political participation motivation system is a complex system composed of self-and other-system.The selfsystem includes controlled motivation(social impact),instrumental motivation(perceived usefulness),and intrinsic motivation(political interest and political efficacy).The facilitated motivation from the institutional environment(perceived internet regulation and perceived government responsiveness),the political cultural environment(democratic value and trust of government)and the information technology environment(trust of participation tools and perceived ease of use)constitute the other-system.The self-system is always under the influence of the othersystem.Second,the self-system inputs demand to the public and influences participation degree,explaining the "why" problem.The other-system inputs support to the public and influences institutional level of participation,revealing the "how" problem.The motivation system of online political participation determines which type of online political participation the public will take.Third,online political participation is under constantly change.Participation often starts with online information gathering which is driven by intrinsic motivation.Perceived ease of use significantly promotes information gathering and stimulates perceived usefulness.The accumulation of information further strengthens perceived usefulness,therefore,prompts the public to climbing the participation ladder.Whether the government can effectively respond to the public and provide a secure platform for participation determines the public’s online political expression is evolving towards online institutional-or online targetedparticipation.Forth,the government should improve response capabilities,optimize internet ecological-governance,protect data privacy and security,and promote Con Tech development to achieve the goal of expanding the people’s orderly political participation.The innovation of this study lies in: First,a typology analysis of Chinese online political participation was conducted to fill the shortage of current academic research.5 sub-types were identified.This study analyzed the characteristics of 5 sub-types from the perspective of information flow,adding "horizontally" information flow between the publics as an analysis path besides the traditional "vertically" flow between the public and the government.It deepens the theoretical understanding of online political participation.Second,current academic research on this issue often has two analysis paths,namely,the political participation perspective and information system acceptance perspective.In this study the self-determination theory and the UTAUT model were selected from the two theoretical perspectives to build an integrating model.Political system analysis method was used to find limitations of the integrated model and modify it.The motivation system constructed by this study revealed the pattern of the emergence and development of online political participation,serves as a supplement to the current research academia.It broadens the breadth and depth of research on online political participation.Third,a weight-and meta-analysis was conducted as an integration of current empirical research to identify promising influencing factors of online political participation as elements of motivation system.The application of weight-and meta-analysis is innovative in research methods.