中国公众的收入公平感:一种新制度主义社会学的解释

借助“嵌入性”和“合法性”概念,本文将关于社会公平感形成的基本共识理论与自我评价理论整合起来,提出了一种关于分配公平感的新制度主义社会学解释。本文认为,社会成员对自己所获得的社会资源是否公平的感受取决于社会成员的自我认知与社会共识之间达成一致的程度。当自我感知的地位低于社会评价的地位时,个体倾向于认为自己所得到的社会资源是不公平的;相反,当自我感知的地位与社会评价地位一致或更高时,个体则更有可能认为自己所得到的社会资源是公平的。基于上述命题,本文进一步提出研究假设,相对于主观阶层地位达到或高于其职业声望者,主观阶层地位低于其职业声望的人更倾向于认为自己的收入是不公平的。对2006年中国综合社会调查(CGSS2006)数据的分析结果较有力地支持了这一研究假设;研究结果表明,本文所提出的理论命题比基于理性选择的自利理论更好地解释了为什么社会成员,尤其是社会经济地位较低者,依然会认为自己的收入是公平的。

Perception of Income Fairness:A Sociological New Institutionalist Explanation

Drawing on the concepts of embeddedness and legitimacy, this study fuses the two theories of primary ideology and self-evaluation on social justice to suggest a new institutionalist explanation of distributive fairness. We argue that people's belief of income fairness is decided by whether one's subjective socioeconomic status agrees with the social consensus. If the self-perceived status is lower than what is by the social consensus, one is likely to feel income unfairness. If the perception is consistent with, or even amounts to a higher status than what is by the social consensus, then one tends to believe income fairness. In other words, people whose subjective socioeconomic status is lower than their occupational prestige are more likely to see their income as unfair than people who have the two harmonized. The results of statistical analysis of the CGSS2006 strongly support our argument. It shows that the proposed theoretical explanation does a better job than the self-interest rational choice theory to explain why people, especially low socioeconomic status members, still view their income to be fair.