Peer Association and Routine Activities in Sex Worker Patronage among Male Migrant Workers

ABSTRACT

Studies of people who buy sex often focus on psychological and personality factors with less attention paid to the role of social contexts. This study integrates the two lines of inquiry, routine activity theory and peer deviance, to examine the social process of paying for sex. We argue that deviant peer association may shape buying sex due to peers’ role in shifts in the three components of routine activity theory: motivation, targets, and lack of guardians. With rich information on sexual behaviors from the China Migrant Sexual Health Survey (n = 1,521), we conducted a series of regressions and structural equation models on commercial sex behaviors among male migrants. Our findings demonstrate that having more peers engaged in deviance is significantly associated with buying sex; the three routine activity components are also significantly associated with buying sex; the peer effect on buying sex is significantly (39% of the variance) mediated by routine activities. These results help understand the role of routine activities in mediating peer association and buying sex, and also contributes to the literature of sex work on the less-studied population of sex work clients in China. Theoretically, the results provide evidence for the role of peers in shaping routine activities.

Notes

¹ A crude Google Scholar search for “sex work client” returns one third the size of that for keyword “sex worker”.

² The theory was initially proposed as an ecological explanation of deviance for its emphases on situations rather than the nature of the deviance and actors. Many otherwise normal behaviors can be understood by the three factors of motivation, targets, and guardians when the behaviors are negatively sanctioned. For example, if BDSM faces legal or social punishment, in order to have sex, a BDSM participant needs sufficient sexual motivation, a target partner, and no guardians against them.

³ “Enjoy pleasure” is translated from Chinese xiangle, “have fun” is translated from xingle, both carry strong connotation of indulgence in corporal pleasure.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiaozhao Y. Yang

Xiaozhao Y. Yang, Ph.D. is currently an Associate Professor at Sun Yat-sen University and a fellow of the University's Hundred Talents Project. Prior to this appointment, he was an Assistant Professor at Murray State University. Yang's research focuses on contextual influences on at-risk health behaviors such as substance use and sexual risk acts. He is also published on how county- and country-level demographic heterogeneity shifts the health implications of social disadvantages.

Brian Kelly

Brian C. Kelly, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at Purdue University and Director of Purdue’s Center for Research on Young People’s Health. His research examines contextual influences on young people’s health, mainly focusing on substance use, sexual health, and mental health. Dr. Kelly’s current research focuses on prescription drug misuse among young adults, contextual and policy effects on opioid use and mortality, cross-substance policy effects on marijuana and tobacco use, and sibling influences of adolescent substance use.

Tingzhong Yang

Tingzhong Yang, is a Professor Emeritus at Zhejiang University Children's Hospital, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research. He is a devoted researcher committed to a career in tobacco control and public health research. His research resulted in over a hundred publications and he has been amongst the first to lead China's tobacco-free space campaign.