Leaving Hong Kong?: The roles of attitude, subjective norm, perceived control, social identity and relative deprivation

This article reports a study of Hong Kong people's intention in 1992 to lea ve after the 1997 Transition. Seventy-one employees ii? a medium sized orga nization in Hong Kong responded to measures based on theories of planned be haviour, social identity, and relative deprivation. Identification runs ass ociated with status evaluations of Hong Kong rather than perceived personal benefits from living there. Intention to leave was associated with attitud es and subjective norm but not with other variables. Perceived control mode rated the relationship of anticipated deprivation to frustration and identi fication. Among respondents with low control, but not those with high contr ol, anticipated deprivation was associated with greater frustration and low ered identification. We distinguish between leaving the group physically vs psychologically. The results are interpreted as being consistent with a So cial Identity Theory perspective on social change and inter group boundary permeability. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd All rights reserved.