Neighborhood governance in post-reform Urban China: Place attachment impact on civic engagement in Guangzhou

China has experienced an unprecedented surge in rural-urban migration since the mid-1980s, leading to rapid growth in urban populations, especially in large cities. These floating populations pose a challenge to local authorities with respect to neighborhood governance. In particular, those lacking official registration status (hukou) are reported to possess lower place attachment to the destination neighborhood and seem to lack aspiration to participate in civic engagement. Against this background, the paper’s first objective is to explore the determinants of residents’ aspiration to participate in civic engagement, emphasizing the effects of their place attachment and experience of participation. Its second objective is to discuss the heterogeneity of residents’ civic engagement rooted in the difference in their residential registration status. To this end, a group of hukou holders (native residents and migrants who transferred hukou) are contrasted with a group of non-hukou migrants with respect to the aspiration to participate and related mechanisms. Using evidence from a 2015 survey of 1273 residents in Guangzhou, a stepwise approach of linear probability models reveals two main empirical findings. First, residents’ place attachment has a direct positive impact on their aspiration to participate in civic engagement, mediated by residents’ experience of participation behavior. Second, compared to the native residents group, migrants possess lower place attachment and participate less in civic engagement (both actual behavior and future aspiration), and the mediation effect of migrants’ participation experience is much weaker. This implies that, without hukou status, migrants lack positive feedback from their participation experience and so are less eager to participate in civic engagement. Based on these findings, the paper outlines the heterogeneity in residents’ place attachment and the institutional barriers to civic engagement. The hukou system still restricts migrants’ participation, so neighborhood governance policy-makers should seek to address this hukou constraint in urban China.