Multi-ethnicity as a moderator of contextual effects on tolerance: The case of Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

Grounded in intergroup threat theory, much research has illustrated the negative impact of the contextual presence of ethnic minorities construed as threats by the mainstream society on racial attitudes. This study examines the possibility that the presence of other “non-threatening” ethnic minorities could undermine such negative impact. We contend that the presence of genuine diversity can promote multicultural experiences and reduce people’s tendency to single out specific ethnic groups as threatening. Analysis of telephone survey (N = 2407) and government by-census data in Hong Kong shows that proportion of district residents being South Asians and proportion of district residents using Mandarin as their usual spoken language were associated with lower levels of social and political tolerance when proportion of district residents being other ethnic minorities was low. The negative impact became weaker when proportion of other ethnic minorities increased. The pattern of results was more conspicuous among less educated citizens.

KEYWORDS:

• Context effects
• Multi-ethnicity
• Intergroup threat theory
• Tolerance
• Hong Kong

Notes

¹ According to the by-census in 2016, 80,028 South Asians were living in Hong Kong, and 131,406 residents used Mandarin as their “usual spoken language.” The relationships between the two ethnic minority groups and the mainstream society were also spotlighted during the huge wave of protests in Hong Kong in the second half of 2019 and the COVID-19 coronavirus in 2020. While there were moments of “reconciliation” or “reconnection” between the South Asian community and the mainstream society during some protest events, the conflict between mainland migrants and local Hong Kongers has intensified since the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

² Sampling was therefore based only on residential phone numbers. Despite concerns about the rising number of households without fixed lines, Chiu and Jiang (2017) showed that in the mid-2010s in Hong Kong, survey samples derived from residential numbers were more representative of the population than samples derived from mobile numbers were.

³ Response Rate 3 included cases of unknown eligibility in the calculation. The current response rates were typical of telephone surveys in contemporary Hong Kong.

⁴ The sample was not weighted according to family income because of the lack of information about the age X family income and gender X family income distributions of the population. Weighting the samples by education should have alleviated the sample-population discrepancies in family income.

⁵ The Cronbach’s alpha values for social and political tolerance were not high, which reflected a significant degree of target-specificity regarding Hong Kong people’s social and political tolerance. However, combining them is conceptually meaningful because the aim of the present analysis was to examine social and political tolerance in general.

⁶ While official data about sub-district units are available, telephone survey respondents could have found it difficult to identify the exact sub-districts they were living in, and they might have found find the question intrusive if it asked for a precise indication of where they lived.

⁷ The findings are available at: https://www.bycensus2016.gov.hk/en/bc-dp.html

⁸ The proportion of South Asians did not relate significantly to district level income, gender ratio, median age, percentage of university degree holders, labor force participation rate, or average household size. The proportion of Mandarin speakers was not related to district-level gender ratio, median age, or average household size. However, it was related significantly to district level income, percentage of degree holders, and labor force participation rate. However, when district level income was controlled, the proportion of Mandarin speakers was no longer significantly related to the percentage of degree holders and labor force participation rate. Therefore, controlling for district level income was deemed adequate in the present study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the South China Program, Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, CUHK. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Francis L. F. Lee, upon reasonable request.