澳门市民的福利意识形态：中间路线取向

Welfare Ideology of Macao’s Citizens：An Orientation of the Middle Way

本研究透过电话问卷调查,访问了557位澳门市民,目标是探讨她/他们的福利意识形态,而分析架构包括七方面社会福利的基本观点.结果显示,澳门市民普遍支持平等、集体主义和个人主义的福利观念;认为澳门适合奉行资本主义制度,而经济政策应比社会政策处于优先位置;相信失业问题主要是由社会因素所致,故认为政府有责任为每一位失业者提供帮助.市民普遍确认政府的福利角色及责任,同时认同全民性及选择性的提供方式,但支持向较富裕的人士收回福利服务的成本,而庞大规模的福利体制却得不到普遍的接受;此外,雇主的福利责任亦得到多数市民的支持.因此,澳门市民的福利意识形态,类似由George＆Wilding所提出的中间路线,而混合福利主义及务实主义在她/他们中得到普遍的认同.最后,经过相关系数分析,受访者的年龄、教育程度及每月收入三项个人因素,都没有对受访者的整体福利意识形态立场产生明显的倾向效应.故不同背景的澳门市民,其福利意识形态立场是颇为一致的.

The study is primarily aimed at exploring the welfare ideologies of Macao’s citizens. Telephone survey was employed and there was finally a sum of 557 successful respondents. The analytical framework consists of seven core dimensions of welfare ideology. It is found that a majority of Macao’s peo-ple supports ideas of social equality,individualism and collectivism in the devel-opment of social welfare. They believe that capitalism is a suitable economic system for Macao and agree with the dominant role of economic policy over welfare policy. They tend to regard social factors as the main determinant of unemployment problem and support the government’s role in assisting the un-employed .Furthermore,there is a general agreement that the government has the primary role in providing social welfare universally and guaranteeing the ba-sic needs of all members in the society. Universal and selective mode of welfareprovision is both echoed by a majority of the people. They also favor cost-recov-ery measures on welfare provision for the well off service recipients. However,most people show reluctance to an extensive scale of welfare system since it is regarded as a threat to self-help spirit. At the same time,they agree with the vital role of employers in providing welfare for their employees. It is concluded that welfare ideology of Macao’s citizens can be classified as the Middle Way suggested by George ＆ Wilding. They seem to share the ideas of mixed econo-my of welfare and pragmatism. Moreover,it is also found that the personal variables,namely age,educational level and monthly income,have no signifi-cant influence on the overall ideological orientation of the people,though theyare slightly correlated with certain indicators. In short,the ideological orienta-tion of the Macao’s citizens is highly consistent regardless of their social back-grounds .