The Effects of Strain, Negative Emotions and Trait Hope on Delinquency of Hong Kong Students

• Main Authors: MA, CHI HO JASON, 馬志豪
• Other Authors: LIN, YU-SHENG
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2018
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/ny6c4u

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 犯罪學研究所 === 106 === A Hong Kong government article released in 2018 showed that the overall stress and happiness level of Hong Kong students had decreased over recent years, affecting their health mentally and physically. The objectives of this study were to test the predictive power of the general strain theory for delinquency in the Hong Kong student context, and to explore if the conditioning factor trait-hope acts as a resilience in the GST model. Self-reported questionnaires were collected from 151 Hong Kong secondary school students (87 males and 64 females) aged between 14 to 18. Consistent with results from other GST studies, the current study found that academic underachievement, negative school experiences and negative life events are strong predictors of general, property and violent delinquency and 6 cases of mediation was found. Anger was the only significant mediator found to mediates between strain and delinquency variables positively. The moderation analyses of trait hope were tested on the 6 cases of identified mediation and found evidences of moderated mediation by the trait hope variables. The results lend support to hope theory researches in the past in which pathway thinking was found to moderate between academic underachievement and anger. The effect of pathway thinking conditioning on anger is stronger as the students suffers more academic underachievement strain. Low pathway students are more reactive to academic underachievement through anger compared to the high pathway counterparts. Additionally, agency thinking was also found to moderate between negative life events and anger. Although the effect of agency thinking weakens as students suffer more negative life events strain, increase in agency still helps in the reduction of the anger level of students significantly. However, since pathway thinking is the ability to plan plausible routes to achieve goals, delinquency behaviors can sometimes become the goals of the students when they experience intense short-termed anger. This phenomenon was supported in the results where pathway act as a moderator between anger and property delinquency in which students conflicted with strain by negative school experiences resulted in an increase of property delinquency the higher their level of pathway thinking and anger is (in this case, pathway refers to the means and ways to commit property delinquency). The results also supported the hypothesis that higher anger level reflects in a higher tendency of delinquency. This study suggests that pathway and agency thinking act as a resilience for students suffering from strains by keeping anger level low. Additionally, a positive experience in school also helps in keeping the anger level of students low and ultimately, better well-being of students decreases the tendency of delinquency behaviors by the students. This study shed light on the importance of nurturing hope and providing a healthy school experience for Hong Kong students in their path towards success and happiness.