The impacts of neighbourhood governance on residents’ sense of community: a case study of Wuhan, China

ABSTRACT

This study examined the association between sense of community and neighbourhood governance. Based on residents’ evaluation of the service efficacies of the government, market and resident agencies, three types of neighbourhood governance are identified: tripartite balance governance, weak-market governance and government-dominated governance. The tripartite balance governance does not necessarily lead to a higher sense of community than the government-dominated governance, but the latter significantly promotes a higher sense of community than the weak-market governance. The diversity of agencies is not necessarily conducive to sense of community, whilst those agencies’ horizontal cooperation based on even power relations promotes sense of community.

KEYWORDS:

• Sense of community
• perceived neighbourhood governance
• urban neighbourhood
• China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (2019), the average per capita disposable income of China’s urban residents was ¥39,251 in 2018.

2. According to 1% National Survey of China, in 2015, approximately 12.5% of Chinese had education attainments of college or above.

3. The Report on the Family Development in China (2015) showed that the national average family size was 3.35 persons.

4. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (2017), China’s per capita housing area was 40.8 m² in 2016.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: this work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 42171203; 41971185).