Social capital and perceived tenure security of informal housing: Evidence from Beijing, China

Perceived tenure security is recognised to affect the socioeconomic behaviours and wellbeing of informal settlement dwellers. The provision of perceived tenure security is centred on the developmental agenda as a key policy alternative of tenure legalisation. Despite the consensus about its importance, the reason perceived tenure security is different amongst dwellers remains unclear. To fill this gap, we introduce social capital theory to understand the formation of and disparity in perceived tenure security. The hypotheses are that dwellers living in informal settlements with higher collective social capital and having higher individual social capital tend to feel more secure on their tenure because of higher backing power attained to deter the threats of eviction. We examine the hypotheses using a structural equation model approach to a dataset collected from three small property rights housing communities, which are emerging informal settlements in urban China. Modelling results support our hypotheses and suggest that female, low-income and migrant dwellers tend to feel less secure on their tenure because of the lack of social capital to deter the threats to their tenure. This study contributes to a new sociological explanation for the disparity in perceived tenure security other than the established psychological explanation. Empirically, this study contributes to the understanding of the rapid development of small property rights housing developments in China from the perspective of how dwellers develop security on informal tenure.