Migrant Worker's Social Networks and Collective Behavioral Willingness—A Whole Network Analysis

Abstract

Migrant workers' social networks are an important source of social support in their collective behavior. This study adopts the whole network method and proposes a measure of accumulated social capital in social networks, which makes up for the insufficiency of direct social capital. It compares the heterogeneous effects of formal and informal networks and accumulated and direct social capital on migrant workers' collective behavioral willingness and dissects their interaction mechanism. The results indicate that informal networks are more conducive to collective behavioral willingness. The formal network is the regulator of the informal network, which can strengthen the effect of the informal network on migrant workers' collective behavioral willingness. Accumulated social capital more robustly affects collective behavioral willingness than direct social capital. Therefore, optimizing the measurement of social capital can help to grasp the social effects of social capital more comprehensively. To sum up, fully stimulating the role of informal network center members as a communication bridge between factory and ordinary migrant workers is conducive to promoting the positive coupling of formal and informal networks and improving governance efficiency.