Conflict groups between Hong Kong’s youth and acceptance towards deviant behaviors in a social movement

Abstract

In view of the deviant behavior during the Hong Kong anti-extradition bill amendment in 2019, this study is aiming to explore the acceptance towards deviant behavior in social movement among Hong Kong’s youth by using group conflict theory, distinguish conflict groups among youth and identify their characteristics. Group conflict theory view in modern society, people will form conflict groups to compete with other groups to protect their interest by controlling the legislative power and criminal justice power. Therefore, this study aims at examining the influence of intuitional trust, family income, class, and awareness of civil rights towards the acceptance of deviant behavior during social movement. This study uses a quantitative method to collect data from 214 respondents. After the two-step cluster analysis, the result indicates three conflict groups among the youth. Following the discriminant analysis, the results show that the group that has lower institutional trust and higher awareness of civil constraint will respond to the authority group and highly accept the deviant behavior during social movement. Family income and class have no significant effect on accepting deviant behaviors among the social movement.