Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University, 178899 Singapore, Singapore.
Department of Industrial Systems Engineering and Management, Faculty of Engineering, National University of Singapore, 117576 Singapore, Singapore;
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2019 Apr 2;116(14):6720-6725. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1815723116. Epub 2019 Mar 4.
We conduct a 3-y study involving 11,662 respondents to map cultural tightness-the degree to which a society is characterized by rules and norms and the extent to which people are punished or sanctioned when they deviate from these rules and norms-across 31 provinces in China. Consistent with prior research, we find that culturally tight provinces are associated with increased governmental control, constraints in daily life, religious practices, and exposure to threats. Departing from previous findings that tighter states are more rural, conservative, less creative, and less happy, cultural tightness in China is associated with urbanization, economic growth, better health, greater tolerance toward the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community, and gender equality. Further, analyzing about 3.85 million granted patents in China (1990-2013), we find that provinces with tighter cultures have lower rates of substantive/radical innovations yet higher rates of incremental innovations; individuals from culturally tighter provinces reported higher levels of experienced happiness.
我们进行了一项为期 3 年的研究，涉及 11662 名受访者，以绘制中国 31 个省份的文化紧张程度图谱——社会的规则和规范程度以及当人们偏离这些规则和规范时受到惩罚或制裁的程度。与先前的研究一致，我们发现文化紧张的省份与政府控制的增加、日常生活的限制、宗教实践以及面临威胁有关。与之前的研究结果不同，之前的研究结果表明，文化更紧张的州更农村、更保守、更缺乏创造力、更不快乐，而中国的文化紧张程度与城市化、经济增长、更好的健康状况、对女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋和跨性别者（LGBT）群体的更大容忍度以及性别平等有关。此外，通过分析中国（1990-2013 年）约 385 万项已授权专利，我们发现文化更紧张的省份的实质性/激进创新率较低，但增量创新率较高；来自文化更紧张省份的个人报告的幸福感水平更高。
