Consciousness on property rights, homeowner associations and neighbourhood governance: Evidence from Shanghai

Previous studies have scrutinised the proliferation of privately governed neighbourhoods and the role of homeowner associations (HOAs) in governing the neighbourhood and residents' conducts in different contexts, while little attention has been paid to individual residents' agency. This research introduces a novel perspective to examine the role of neighbourhood residents and their perception of property rights, which carry significant weight in governing the private neighbourhoods in transitional urban China. Based on a large-scale neighbourhood-based survey in Shanghai, this study employs multilevel regression models to understand the determinants of individual-level consciousness on property rights and its correlations with the outcomes of HOA governance efficacy at neighbourhood level. Empirical results suggest that housing tenure, community participation, sense of collectivism, gatedness, size and age of neighbourhoods are significantly correlated with residents' consciousness on property rights, and that the rise of consciousness among individual residents is positively associated with the governance efficacy of HOAs. Through presenting a contextualised examination of the emerging “private” governance in China and addressing a missing account of consciousness on property rights in the literature, this study makes theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding the complex social processes of neighbourhood governance in China and beyond.