Study On The Influence Of Social Support On Subjective Well-being Of The Elderly Residents In Chinese Urban Communities

As the trend of an aging population in China will continue to accelerate,it has been inducing a comprehensive and far-reaching influence on the economic and social development.How to improve the happiness of the elderly has attracted more attention from the government and society.In 2012,“active aging” was written into the Law on the Protection of the Rights and Interests of the Elderly as a long-term national policy,which is the basic concept of China's ageing service and ageing cause planning.Subjective well-being is crucial content when studying mental health of the elderly from the perspective of active aging and social support has regarded the second most important elements regarding elderly subjective well-being,with the first being personality trait.Previous domestic studies on how social support affecting the subject well-being of the elderly was not only scattered,but also lacking system research,theory building and comparative analysis.Research on the happiness of the elderly population,exploring the cause of well-being,carrying out the systematic and in-depth research on how social support affect the subject well-being of the elderly system is significant to enhance the level of the senior citizen's happiness and perfecting ageing service governance.According to the research approach containing theories and literature studies,model building,empirical design and analysis,and policy proposal,this dissertation studies the effect of social support on subjective well-being of Chinese senior residents living in urban communities and its driving mechanism,in order to explore how the social support source,the social support type,and the socioeconomic characteristics impact the subjective well-being and the interaction mechanism.First,this study constructs the problem's mechanism analysis based on literature review and theories research and builds the research model on the influence of social support with the subjective well-being of older residents of urban community.Second,on the basis of previous research,the study designs life satisfaction scale for the elderly residents of urban community.Combining the socioeconomic characteristics scale,Social Support Scale and Memorial University of Newfoundland Scale of Happiness scale,the face to face questionnaire of the influence of social support on the subjective well-being of Chinese urban elderly respondents was developed.Using the descriptive statistics and regression statistical method,the dissertation conducts the cross-section analysis and special comparative analysis to investigate the influence and the driving mechanism of social support types,social support sources and demographic characteristics on subjective well-being of the elderly in urban communities.The comparative study is carried out on how social support influencing the subjective well-being between the two elderly groups living in factory class community and government enterprise class community.At last,this paper proposes policy measures to improve the subjective well-being of the elderly in urban communities by using social support intervention methods.The main contents of the study include the following four aspects:1)Research on the mechanism of social support influencing the subjective well-being of the elderly.Based on literature research and theoretical research,this paper constructs an influence mechanism model that considers the effect of social support on the subjective well-being of the seniors living in urban communities.The model consists social support-subjective well-being of the elderly-urban community environment;and individual socioeconomic characteristics-subjective well-being of the elderly-urban community environment influencing mechanism,including the elderly population's psychological cognition,affection,socioeconomic characteristics,sources of social support and social support types.This model includes the main direct hypothesis and buffering hypothesis implying the social support has positive effects on the elderly's mental health and can buffer the adverse effect of stress through cognition assessment and emotional assessment of the elderly.Individual socioeconomic characteristics also influence on the mental health of the elderly.2)Empirical design and analysis of the influence mechanism of social support on subjective well-being of the elderly residents living in urban communities.The study uses random sampling to carry out the face to face survey in a central Chinese city Hefei,and applies descriptive statistics analysis,correlation analysis,regression analysis to validate the above research model.The results partly verified the main effect and buffer effect of social support on the subjective well-being of the elderly in urban communities.Among the social support types,the perceived support and the degree of utilization support has main effect and buffer effect on the subjective well-being,cognition,and affection elderly.The buffer effect of enacted support is not obvious.Among the three sources of social support in the study,only friend support has an overall positive effect on the subjective well-being of the elderly and the cognitive and emotional aspects of the elderly,and friend support also act as a pressure reliever for seniors.The support of spouse and adult offspring's main effect and buffer effect is not obvious.However,family support is the most important source of social support for the elderly in urban communities,especially for the oldest old.For people in the factory class and government enterprise class communities of elderlies,because of the difference in social economic characteristics and community environment,the main effect and buffer effect of subjective well-being caused by social sources and types of social support for the elderly are also significantly different.The social support that meets the demand of the elderly will positively influence the subjective well-being.The overall effect of social support processes dynamically.3)Analysis of the influence of socioeconomic characteristics of the elderly living in urban communities on social support with subjective well-being of the elderly.The different individual socioeconomic characteristics will affect the social support status of the elderly,and impact their subjective well-being greatly.Among the individual socioeconomic characteristics,self-reported health status,income status and education level are the most important factors affecting older adults.Improving self-reported health status can significantly rise the elderly's overall subjective well-being,and increase the positive affection of the elderly residents,and reduce the elderly's negative emotion.Increasing income can significantly alleviate the negative emotions of the elderly living in factory communities.In factory communities,the higher the education level of the older adults,the higher the life satisfaction rate of the elderly.4)Policy promoted on the subjective well-being of the elderly in urban communities.Based on the research results of the influence mechanism of social support on the subjective well-being of the elderly in urban communities,this paper proposes policy suggestions to improve the subjective well-being of the elderly in urban communities through government social support intervention,including formulating multi-level social support intervention plans according to actual needs of the senior citizens;Actively promote the participation of the elderly in social activities;Provide personalized social support services according to the different characteristics of the elderly;Encourage and strengthen the function of family.Compared to the past researches,in addition to considering the social support theory,this paper also employs social emotional choice theory,interpersonal relations theory,social resources theory,need theory and community theory as foundation building a systematic research model on how social support affects the subjective well-being of elderly from the aspects of endogenous and exogenous factors,which includes five categories of social support type,social support source,psychological cognition,affection,individual socioeconomic.Moreover,that model is verified to explore the social support driving mechanism of how social support influences the subjective well-being of urban communities.It is a further exploration of how social support effect on the subjective well-being of elderly residents in the urban communities and provides a theoretical foundation and decision-making reference for enriching the study of the life quality of senior citizens in China and promoting the policy formulation and implementation of the urban community endowment service.