A Study On The Impact Of Social Capital On Residents’ Participation In Transitional Community Governance

As China’s urbanisation process continues to advance,the number of communities in transition continues to increase across the country,with "village to residence" communities alone accounting for around a quarter of all urban communities.The effectiveness of governance in communities in transition has a direct impact on the modernisation of the national governance system,and is also related to the realisation of the pattern of shared governance,in which the point of achieving "shared governance" lies in the participation of residents in community governance.At present,communities in transition are generally faced with the problem of insufficient participation and low motivation to participate.In order to change the current situation,improve the level of residents’ participation and realise effective governance in communities in transition,it is necessary to conduct research on residents’ participation in community governance in communities in transition.Social capital theory and social identity theory have a strong explanatory power for residents’ participation,and this can help us better understand and solve the problems in residents’ participation.This paper follows the approach of "literature review,problem formulation,problem analysis and problem solving".Firstly,it identifies the background and significance of the study,and summarises the current status of research on community transformation and residents’ participation in community governance on the basis of domestic and international research.With the support of social capital theory,combined with social identity theory and governance theory,the study establishes a conceptual model with three dimensions of social capital as independent variables(network capital,trust capital and normative capital),residents’ participation behaviour as dependent variable and community identity as mediating variable,and proposes research hypotheses on this basis.Transformation communities in Cangshan District,Fuzhou City,were selected as the survey sites,and data were obtained through questionnaires.Using SPSS statistical analysis software,descriptive statistical analysis,reliability testing,correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were conducted on the collected data to verify the research hypotheses one by one.The final conclusions are as follows:(1)Social capital as a whole has a significant positive impact on residents’ participation in transformed community governance,and network capital,trust capital and normative capital have a significant positive impact on residents’ participation in transformed community governance.(2)Each dimension of social capital has a significant positive impact on institutionalized,equity-based,and public participation of residents in transition communities.(3)Community identity in transitional community governance mediates the relationship between community social capital and residents’ participation behaviour.Based on the findings,this paper proposes policy recommendations to enhance residents’ participation in transitional community governance in four dimensions,including actively cultivating community social trust,making efforts to improve community reciprocity norms,closely networking horizontal neighbourhood relations,and taking multiple measures to enhance community identity,in order to provide references for solving the problem of residents’ participation in transitional community governance,promoting urban integration in transitional communities,and achieving better community governance effectiveness and patterns This will promote urban integration in communities in transition and achieve better community governance outcomes and patterns.