Collective resistance intention of migrants to resettlement policies: the role of influential pathways of information sources

Abstract

The failure of large-scale resettlement policies has been largely determined by the collective resistance of residents. For migrants who must leave their original residence and get resettled, mass media and interpersonal communication are important sources to get policy information, which affects their attitudes and responses to resettlement policies. Existing studies have provided two pathways to explain the influencing mechanism between information sources and people’s collective resistance intention. One of these pathways focuses on trust in government and the other highlights perceived benefits. However, it is still unclear how to predict migrants’ collective resistance intention based on different information sources within these two pathways. By concentrating on the policy domain of Chinese resettlement projects, this study aims to develop an integrated, theoretical framework to explore the causal paths between information sources and migrants’ collective resistance intention. Based on a survey of three towns in Ankang, China, we tested the causal mechanism with a structural equation model. The results demonstrate that the pathway that involves trust in government is more explanatory in illustrating the causal mechanism than the pathway of perceived benefits, and interpersonal communication yields stronger effects than mass media in mitigating migrants’ collective resistance intention. The implications for resettlement policy publicity and trust-building in China are discussed.

Points for practitioners

Public communication is a critical competency for public managers. Public managers are recommended to flexibly apply various information sources to communicate with migrants in order to eventually mitigate their collective resistance intention by strengthening their trust in government, as well as their perceived benefits. In the early stages of policy publicity, a variety of mass media are needed to inform the migrants of resettlement policies. Then, at the stage of policy implementation, the primary focus becomes interpersonal communication that offers sufficiently detailed information. In this regard, local government managers should carry out more programs that entail face-to-face information sharing to help participants understand the resettlement policy, and encourage them to explain it to their family and friends.