Are Chinese college graduates satisfied with serving as village officials? An evaluation with nationwide survey data

ABSTRACT

To promote rural socio-economic development, the Chinese government has encouraged college graduates to work in villages since 2005, bringing about a novel nonmarket-determined job called graduate village official. We use nationwide survey data to analyse the determinants of job satisfaction for graduate village officials. Empirical results show that the job satisfaction of graduate village officials is basically not determined by their personal traits, but by social contexts as well as job factors. Salary, occupational pride, adaption to rural work, supports from leaders and job prospects impact more on graduate village officials’ job satisfaction than other factors. Unreasonable policy management and implementation contribute to graduate village officials’ job dissatisfaction. Finally, we briefly discuss potential policy implications of our findings.

KEYWORDS:

• Job satisfaction
• graduate village officials (大学生村官)
• ordered-probit model
• Chinese government
• nationwide survey data

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous referees as well as the editor for useful comments and suggestions. This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 15BZZ001], Beijing Social Science Foundation [grant number: 16ZGA001], the Basic Research Funds for China’s Central Universities [grant number 2242016S20013] and National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number: 71771052].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See http://www.infzm.com/content/103399, access date: 18 October 2015.

2. Due to the space limitation, we do not report their estimated coefficients.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [71771052]; Basic Research Funds for China’s Central Universities [2242017K40168];National Social Science Foundation of China [15BZZ001]; and Beijing Social Science Foundation [16ZGA001].

Notes on contributors

Yanyan Gao

Dr. Yanyan Gao is an assistant professor at School of Economics and Management, Southeast University, China. His research interests include various topics of applied economics with respect to political economy, rural development, innovation and the socioecomic impacts of the Internet. He has published several papers in top Chinese journals like Economic Research Journal and international journals like Research Policy.

Leizhen Zang

Dr. Leizhen Zang is an assistant professor at School of Public Policy and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. He is also a Japan Foundation Fellow at Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia in the University of Tokyo and a research fellow at Institute of State Governance in Peking University. His research covers comparative politics and innovation management, specializing in East Asia. His articles have been published in peer-review journals at home and abroad, such as Research Policy, China: An international Journal, etc.

Jun Sun

Dr. Jun Sun is an associate professor at the Business School of Huaihai Institute of Technology, China. His research fields include regional economics, international trade and industrial policies. He has published a list of papers in China''s leading journals such as Management World and the Journal of Quantitative & Technical Economics.