3.1. Research Area and Data Collection
We select Guangzhou as the study area. Guangzhou is the capital and largest city of Guangdong province. It is located in southern coastal China and holds a central location in the Pearl River Delta, proximate to Hong Kong. By the end of 2020, Guangzhou hosted 18.74 million permanent residents, and the registered permanent population was 9.85 million. People without Guangzhou local household registration comprised around 50% [
37]. The urbanization rate was 86.19%. Guangzhou is the fifth largest city in terms of population among the prefectural cities in China. In 2020, its GDP was 2502 billion yuan, ranking fourth nationwide (after Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen) [
38].
Quota sampling surveys and online questionnaires were adopted to investigate the social inclusion perceived by Guangzhou residents. In 2019, the Guangzhou Municipal Housing and Urban–Rural Development Bureau and Guangzhou Urban Planning, Survey Design, & Research Institute (GZPI) jointly organized the urban health examination activity under the guidance of the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Development; a principal task was the social satisfaction investigation.
Firstly, the sampling quota was determined based on the Industrial Classification for National Economic Activities and the employment statistics of Guangzhou to improve data collection efficiency and assure respondents’ occupation diversity. Specifically, the staff of 22 functional departments under the Guangzhou municipal government and 11 urban districts were requested to participate in the questionnaire survey. In addition to civil servants from the district and municipal government departments, professional and technical personnel and industrial practitioners also joined the survey. During this quota sampling survey, 0.4% of Guangzhou’s permanent residents aged over 18 were sampled, and a total of 5875 individuals participated.
Simultaneously, questionnaires were publicized on the government website and in local mainstream media. Citizens were invited to participate in the online questionnaires by scanning a QR code. All data were obtained with informed consent.
The questionnaire contains 36 questions in total. Questions 1 to 6 and 28–36 are in single-choice format. These questions collect the personal information of respondents, such as age, gender, education level, salary, work and residence locations, household registration status, length of residence in Guangzhou, etc.
The rest of the questionnaire requested respondents to evaluate their social inclusion level. For example, Question 17 is “How do you feel about migrants from other provinces that live in Guangzhou?” Questions for each indicator were in the form of either a close-ended, single-choice question with a five-point Likert scale or a single-choice question. The original scoring of each option was as follows: 5 points for very satisfied, 4 points for relatively satisfied, 3 points for generally satisfied, 2 points for not too satisfied, and 1 point for very unsatisfied. These scores were then converted into 100-scale scores: 1 point for 20, 2 points for 40, 3 points for 60, 4 points for 80, and 5 points for 100.
By the end of July 2019, 10,085 questionnaires were collected. To ensure data accuracy and avoid repetitive “brush ticket” behaviors, the response system set restrictions that each IP address, PC, or cell phone could only answer once. Telephone interviews were also conducted to double-check the authenticity of respondents. In addition, questionnaires that took too long or too short to respond to were also eliminated. After going through all these data-cleaning techniques, 9607 questionnaires were valid.
Demographic Characteristics
Table 1 provides the demographic information of the respondents. Urban residents in Guangzhou can be categorized as residents with local household registration status or hukou, residents with non-local household registration (Chinese domestic migrants), and foreign residents. Native residents holding Guangzhou hukou consisted of about 46% of the surveyed people. Non-local residents with Guangzhou hukou accounted for around 19%. About 35% were Chinese migrants without Guangzhou hukou, and the remaining 0.12% were foreign immigrants. Residents with local household registration have mostly been living in Guangzhou since they were children. In contrast, residents with non-local household registration mostly moved to Guangzhou for living and job opportunities only in recent years. The number of people who lived in Guangzhou for more than ten years accounted for 66.6% of the total respondents, and those who lived there for five to ten years and one to five years accounted for 11.3% and 16.1%, respectively. Thus, most respondents were quite familiar with the living environment of Guangzhou.
Among the total 9607 respondents, 5059 were women (52.7%), and 4548 were men (47.3%); thus, the sex ratio was quite balanced. In terms of their residential locations, Baiyun district accommodated most of the respondents (2643 people). Respondents from Liwan district (384 people) and Huangpu district (413 people) were relatively few, while the numbers of respondents from other districts were all above 500.
Regarding age distribution, most respondents fell into the group between 30–39 years old, accounting for 36.1% of the respondents; 28.9% of the respondents were aged between 40–49; and 25.8% were aged between 20–29. Thus, respondents were mainly young and middle-aged people.
Regarding their educational background, the number of respondents with a bachelor’s degree or above accounted for 47.4%. People with college degrees accounted for 26.4%, and 17.2% graduated from a high school or secondary technical school. In this sense, all respondents have finished primary education, and most were relatively well-educated. The variety of their education levels also ensures the authenticity and representativeness of the collected information in reflecting the perceptions of social inclusion by most of the people in Guangzhou.
In terms of their work location, the highest number of respondents worked in the Baiyun district (2672 people), comprising 27.8%. All the other districts have over 500 respondents working there, except for the Liwan district (163 people) and Huangpu district (444 people). If we further look into their jobs by industrial sector, 79% of the respondents worked in the tertiary industry, and the primary and secondary sectors together employed 21% of the respondents, which is consistent with the industrial structure of Guangzhou. Concerning the job levels, entry-level employees, middle-level employees, and senior-level managers accounted for 72% of the respondents (6870 people), 22% (2151 people), and 6% (586 people), respectively.
Regarding the annual household income, the proportion of respondents with a total annual income between CNY 100,000 and 200,000 was the largest, at 24.9%. Most respondents belonged to the low- or middle-income level. In this way, the collected data can represent the social inclusion perceptions of Guangzhou’s general public, who enjoy a moderate standard of living.
3.2. Social Inclusion Indicator System
The opinion concerning conducting city health examination pilots formulated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban–Rural Development stipulated that the social inclusion degree of a city involves how the city takes care of the old, the disabled, the rural-to-urban migrant laborers, and international migrants.
Theoretically, the essence of social inclusion is citizenship and its level of realization [
39]. Vulnerable groups consist of disabled people, the elderly, and people who are treated differently compared to ordinary residents in a broad sense, where urban residents’ opinions and social perspectives can influence their living conditions [
40]. The level of social inclusion may also be affected by whether residents pay attention to the protection and care of vulnerable groups in their daily routine, as well as whether they provide social assistance [
41].
The inclusion of foreign immigrants refers to the degree that the residents would subjectively and objectively share their rights and interests with foreigners based on domestic laws and policies [
42]. The inclusion of domestic migrants from other provinces can be understood as the levels of protection and the fulfillment of citizens’ rights that residents and society support, including the degree of the subjective and objective impediments to citizens’ rights in housing, employment, social security, and others [
43].
In addition, multiculturalism is one of the features embodied in contemporary extra-large cities. The acceptance and inclusion of diverse cultures include the levels of acceptance and inclusion of residents of different social classes and ages that differ from one’s own culture, as reflected by the attitudes toward other cultural groups and cultural activities in their daily lives [
44]. Intercultural integration has been progressively realized as an approach to improve social cohesion [
45].
Thus, following the policy instruction from above, social inclusion in this paper is measured using four first-level evaluation indicators, namely the inclusion of foreign immigrants, the inclusion of migrants from other provinces of China, the acceptance and inclusion of different cultures, and the care and inclusion of vulnerable groups. The weighted sum of these four indicators is the overall score of social inclusion.
The weights were determined by fitting the scores marked by Guangzhou residents in the multivariate regression analysis. The formula for calculating the social inclusion index can be obtained as follows:
In Equation (1), denote the inclusion of foreign immigrants, the inclusion of migrants from other provinces of China, the acceptance and inclusion of different cultures, and the care and inclusion of vulnerable groups, respectively. The results of multivariate regression analysis indicated that the social inclusion concerning foreign migrants and care for disadvantaged people significantly influenced the social inclusion index. This article mainly focuses on the inclusion of foreign immigrants and the inclusion of Chinese domestic migrants from other provinces.