What is the relation between cultural values and procrastination among young Chinese? : specifically indecisive procrastination and hedonistic procrastination

(1)

What is the relation between cultural values and

procrastination among young Chinese?

Specifically indecisive procrastination and hedonistic

procrastination.

Amsterdam, June 29, 2015

Author: Yuanyuan Fu Student number: 10621814 Thesis seminar Business studies

Supervisor: Dr. dr. W. (Wendelien) van Eerde Academic year: 2014-2015

(2)

Statement of Originality

This document is written by Student Yuanyuan Fu who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

(3)

Abstract

As procrastination being recognized as more commonly-observed behaviour in our daily settings, it interferes with people’s life, leading to a chaotic or unpleasant situation and results. Books and academic papers have been published, striving to explain this irrational behaviour and attempting to find the ultimate solutions. Yet, while the research has been moving forward, the problems remain unsolved. In this thesis, cultural values were taken into account when examining two most prevailing types of procrastination among young Chinese, specifically indecisive procrastination and hedonistic procrastination. Overseas experience was considered as a source causing divergence in cultural values among young Chinese. Samples were taken from Chinese who lived their whole life in China (111) and Chinese who at least had three months (up to more than five years) overseas living experience (90). Together 191 participants voluntarily took part in a between-group designed questionnaire which included two randomly assigned vignettes and value proposition questions. The results show that while self-direction and stimulation are negatively associated with indecisive procrastination, achievement and conformity have negative relation with hedonistic procrastination. Thus, this thesis provides valuable insights into cross-cultural study of procrastinations.

(6)

1. Introduction

“Procrastination, quite frankly, is an epidemic,” said the writer of “The Procrastination Cure” Jeffery Combs (2012). Recently, an infographic shows that during the 140 million hours people spent on YouTube watching “Gangnam Style”, four pyramids can be built, according to The Economist (The hidden cost of Gangnam Style, 2014). Naturally, we may wonder what drives us to act on this irrationality and feel bad and guilty about it. If it is not truly a personal and individual defect, why not blaming culture roots for the unproductiveness?

Procrastination is referred to the irrational and voluntary delay despite the fact that this intended behavior will result in a negative effect on the individual and can even come at the cost of favorable outcomes (Lay, 1986; Steel, 2007).

Statistics shows that procrastination greatly affects people’s daily life. Harriott and Ferrari (1996) conclude that at the fewest 20% of adults recognize themselves as chronic

procrastinators. Moreover, procrastination can be more commonly found in an academic environment. For example, 50% to 95% of undergraduate students have been affected by procrastination (Janssen & Carton, 1999; Pychyl et al., 2000).

Why do people procrastinate over activities that range from study plans to work tasks, from daily issues to life decisions? There are many reasons that can explain procrastination: fear of failure together with perfectionism or unwillingness to face the negative results that one’s own performance brings (Van Eerde, 2003). In the worst case, it can develop into a behavior pattern, which is recognized as so-called self-handicapping (Urdan & Midgley, 2001). It aims to protect one’s ego or self-pride by claiming that they would have succeeded if they could have started earlier. In addition, Dewitte and Schouwenburg (2002) examine that another major source of postponing turns out to be weak avoidance to temptations and other fun options (rather than to tiredness, extrinsic reasoning, or the change of plans). It leads to many questions: what are the underlying factors that affect procrastination? Is it a personal trait or is it more of a socially-rooted outcome? Is it more driven by cultural factors or is it more like a temporary behavior? In this study, comparison of procrastination is made between Chinese lived their whole life in China and Chinese who had overseas living experience.

(7)

This thesis consists of six parts. It starts with a literature review of existing knowledge about procrastination. As research gap has been identified, the research question and study focus are presented. Then the conceptual framework is proposed. Based on the cultural value variables and procrastination variables, the hypotheses are developed. After that, methodology part deals with practical issue concerning the research design and measurements. Followed by analysis of the survey, the results are presented and discussed.

2. Literature review

In this part, the existence of decisional, avoidant and arousal procrastination are discussed. The literature that covers the relation between Big Five personality attributes and procrastination is briefly reviewed. Followed by the cultural roots of procrastination, the phenomenon of acculturation of Chinese is introduced. The research gap is identified in the conclusion and research question is presented.

2.1 Decisional, avoidant and arousal procrastination, do they exist?

First proposed by Ferrari (1992), three types of procrastinations were commonly recognized by researchers, namely decisional, avoidant and arousal procrastination. However, there was no empirical evidence to confirm these three types of procrastination, especially regarding avoidant and arousal procrastination (Steel, 2010). Nevertheless, a distinction can be drawn between procrastination that occurs during a pre-decisional stage and procrastination occurs during a post-decisional stage (Gollwitzer, 1996). Gollwitzer (1990) states that pre-decisional phase of accomplishing a task or a goal is composed of making preference and choice. It indeed should be distinct from the preactional stage. Preactional stage includes reflection and decision made on where, when, how and how long to carry out, meaning creating a plan for action (Gollwitzer, 1996). Gollwitzer (1996) explains that persons who are asked to

deliberate on a goal are different from those who are directly assigned to plan the carrying out of the goal in the sense that the former develop cognition by going through the pre-decisional phase. As one can deduce the moment that decision is being made divides procrastination into two phases, which are characterized respectively by, deliberative mind-set for pre-decisional phase and implemental mind-set for post-pre-decisional phase. Therefore, different

(8)

types of procrastinations can at least be divided by decision making point, as procrastination caused by an indecisive set of mind should be distinguished from procrastination that takes place after decision-making process.

2.2 Big Five and procrastination

Regardless of ethnicities, ages or gender, procrastination can be found in all groups and nationalities (Ferrari & Beck 1998). In recent years, there have been many studies that focus on the personality attributes to procrastinations based on Big five theory. Schouwenburg and Lay (1995) find that procrastination is highly and negatively related with Conscientiousness and positively associated with Neuroticism, and somewhat related to Extraversion based on a Dutch sample (278) and a Canadian sample (352). However, rarely can it be found that studies that address the procrastination comprehensively based on a cross-cultural level.

2.3 Culture roots and procrastination

For the past few years, some researches have made a few attempts to investigate in the cultural roots of procrastination. Schulze (2005) underlines the influence of cultural factors on individual value. For example, Using Hofstede’s 4 dimensions of culture, Mann et al., (1998) suggest that more procrastinators were discovered in the East Asian sample than the Western one. Built on individualism/collectivism dimension in their research, Janis and Mann (1977) consider the renowned “groupthink” occurrence as a collective example of defensive avoidance. While in Western cultures, an individual is expected to be decisive and take full responsibility for his own decisions, Asian people tend to rely on others in decision making process and blame others for the failure. Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) suggests that autonomy or motivation based on free will is equally important across the universe and it is especially a predictor of study-outcome and social well-being, even for Chinese. However, cross-cultural researchers find that autonomy and self-direction are perceived not as important in Eastern culture compared with Western culture. Logically, it may turn out to be a source of pre-decisional procrastination that results from reluctance to self-decision making (Mann et al., 1998).

(9)

Moreover, a present-fatalistic time orientation was shown to give rise to avoidance procrastination, as it is originated from a sense that the future is predetermined by fate

(Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999). As fatalistic attitude is deeply rooted in the Chinese culture, many Chinese believe that life events are results of karmas (Gao, 2011). Fatalism which can be commonly recognized among Chinese is a passive belief. As a result, those who does not believe they can fully control their life may engage in procrastination when moving towards goals (Gao, 2011). As Chinese feel their lives are not internally orchestrated but rather

externally determined, they might be more inclined to have present-fatalistic time orientation. In addition, Zimbardo and Boyd (1999) find that fatalistic (negative) and hedonistic (positive) affective valence are differently related to present-oriented time perspective. Sirois (2014) finds that low positive affect and high level of stress partially serves as mediators of the relationship between future time perspective and procrastination. In addition, Ferrari (2001) proposes that chronic procrastination is associated with lower future orientation; one possible explanation can be that it eases the present tension or short-term pleasure is more tempting (since they procrastinate by switching to do other things). Schulze (2005) considers that western society in general as leisure-orientated society where enjoyment is the being emphasized. Thus, Western society might be influence by Present-Hedonistic orientation. However, a deeper and more comprehensive understanding and connection between

procrastination and cultural values that derived from a social context need to be viewed and developed.

Besides that, at least one study has suggested that a high prevalence of young people procrastinating chronically has been observed to be identical in the western countries

especially English-speaking countries (Ferrari, O’Callaghan, & Newbegin, 2005). However, researches have not yet laid enough emphasis on the cross-cultural comparisons in terms of prevalence of procrastination (Dietz, Hofer & Fries, 2007).

2.4 Acculturation of Chinese

Little literature can be found that touches upon the relation between cultural values and procrastination. As Chinese having one of the largest populations who lives abroad in the world, they are experiencing culture acculturation to a relatively great extent. Berry, Poortinga, Segall and Dasen (1992) find that individuals act correspondingly to the

(10)

environment that they live in, being influenced by the culture and expectation deriving from the environment. Smith and Khawja (2011) affirm that acculturation is a procedure that international students encounter as they trying to adapt to the new environment. A distinction of acculturation was made by Graves (1967), specifically a collective phenomenon and psychological level of acculturation. Respectively, a collective phenomenon refers to the change that occurs in a group of people and psychological acculturation indicates the change that happens on the psychology level of individuals. The prevalence of procrastination that is specifically influenced by the shifting of cultural values has not yet been determined.

However, Asian international students are very likely to go through stressors and anxiety that has caused by acculturation due to the fact that there is a great gap between eastern and western cultures (Myers-Walls, Frias, Kwon, Ko, & Lu, 2008). It is also believed that acculturation has an identifiable influence on the Chinese international students’

psychological adaptation (Wang et al., 2012). Smith and Khawaja (2011) prove that cultural and social encounters, such as social phenomenon and differences in expressing oneself are considered as one of the most commonly-observed stressors of acculturation. Although there are many studies on the procrastination in students and professionals, there has been little research about the international students or professionals with regard to procrastination (Ackerman & Gross, 2005). This is why this thesis will focus on the influence of cultural values on procrastination.

2.5 Conclusion

Motives and causes of procrastination that are rooted in cultural values will be identified and compared based on Chinese who holds different values. The sample does not discriminate between gender and class: it consists of undergraduates, young professionals or working class. While it is almost impossible to study all procrastinations that are potentially caused by

different factors, the research is mainly focused on two types of procrastination. First one is caused by an indecisive set of mind when making decisions. The second one is caused by distraction from other fun alternatives, which is defined as hedonistic procrastination in this thesis. In addition, owing to the reason that the research is limited to time and resource, it will be targeted primarily on young adults (age between 18 -30 years old). The research question is:

(11)

What is the relation between cultural values and procrastination among young Chinese? Is there a difference in indecisive procrastination and hedonistic procrastination?

3 Conceptual framework

Based on the theoretical framework that was discussed above, the conceptual framework is introduced in this section. First, the Schwartz’s value model is introduced. Second, the expectation of attitudes towards two procrastinations is given and hypotheses regarding the relationships between cultural values and procrastination attitudes are presented.

3.1 Schwartz’s value model

As Barrick and Mount (1991) emphasize that it is necessary to use an accepted and suitable framework to categorize and compile its findings irrespective of any disciplines. Schwarz’s value model will be used to discover the relation between cultural values and procrastination, as Hofstede’s four culture dimensions will be disregarded here. The reasons lie in that

Hofstede discriminates only between nations but not between individuals. In this thesis, personal overseas living experience is expected to be an important factor that influences cultural values. In addition, Hofstede’s study mainly focuses on work aspects of human activities (Schwartz, 2003). Thus, Schwarz (1992) Value Survey, which appears to be the most widely used survey in the field of Sociology and cross-cultural studies, is the most suitable inventory for this thesis. Ten motivational core values, divided in four dimensions, namely Self-transcendence, Self-enhancement, Conservation and Openness to change, are found to represent all the values that have appeared in different cultures (Schwartz, 2003).

This thesis only focused on seven basic values, considered to be relevant for procrastinations as discussed in the literature review. Specifically, seven core values in Figure 1 namely self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, security, conformity and tradition were explained in detail as follows (Schwartz, 2003):

 Self-direction is the thought and action that are independently selected, created and explored. It reflects the level of freedom, creativity, curiosity and tendency to choose one’s own goals.

(12)

 Hedonism stands for one’s pleasure, sensual fulfillment and self-indulgence for the moment.

 Achievement represents individual’s success using competence that based on socially accepted standards.

 Security describes whether one’s relationship with others, within oneself and with society are safe and harmony or not.

 Conformity includes the degree of one’s restraint of behavior, impulses that intend to damage or harm others and violate social norms.

 Tradition stands for acceptance and commitment that one holds for culture and religion of his own.

Figure 1:

(13)

Attitude is composed of three elements: cognitive, affective and behaviour (Ostrom, T. M., 1969). Here, the attitudes of Chinese toward two types of procrastinations were explored from two aspects, namely cognitive aspect by asking “How appropriate do you find Jack‘s behavior?” and behaviour component “How much Jack is like you?”. Attempting to find the statistics evidence of differences in people’s attitude towards two procrastinations, 12 hypotheses were developed.

As being discussed in the previous literature review section, young Chinese people might be more inclined to become indecisive procrastinators. Due to the fact that for people living in Eastern societies, personal freedom, autonomy and self-direction are less essential. On the contrast, tradition and conformity are more salient predictors of their behavior (Schwartz, 1994). As a result, they may first perceive indecisive procrastination as a very indifferent rather than inappropriate behaviour. Owing to the fact that they do not consider it as a very inappropriate and irrational behaviour, it may leads to more indecisive procrastinators.

Hypothesis 1a: Chinese generally perceive indecisive procrastination as an inappropriate behaviour.

Hypothesis 1b: Those who lived abroad perceive indecisive procrastination more inappropriate than those who have never lived abroad.

Hypothesis 2a: Chinese generally are more inclined to perceive themselves as an indecisive procrastinator than a non-indecisive procrastinator.

Hypothesis 2b: Those who lived abroad perceive themselves to lower degree of indecisive procrastination than those who have never lived abroad.

Hypothesis 3a: Self-direction is negatively related to indecisive procrastination.

Hypothesis 3b: Tradition and conformity are positively related to indecisive procrastination.

3.3 Attitudes towards hedonistic procrastination

As being discussed in the literature, western culture is hedonism-oriented while eastern cultural values conformity and tradition. It is a choice between one's indulging in desires and resisting one's impulses as a compromise to objectively imposed limits (Schwartz &

Huismans, 1995). On one hand, hedonism can be a reflection of seeking more concerns for present rather than future consequences. On the other hand, the achievement motivations may

(14)

be the indicator that suggests whether one is stronger enough to resist the temptation. If we consider procrastination as a self-control deficiency result from a lack of achievement motivations, temporary emotion regulation failure and “caving in to feel good”, then

prompting rewards and treatment seem to stimulate such procrastination (Tice & Bratslavsky, 2000). Logically, for young Chinese, it can be expected that hedonism, stimulation,

achievement, tradition and conformity are associated with hedonistic procrastination. Thus, it leads to the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 4a: Chinese generally perceive hedonistic procrastination as an inappropriate behaviour.

Hypothesis 4b: Those who lived abroad perceive a higher level of appropriateness of hedonistic procrastination than those who have never lived abroad.

Hypothesis 5a: Chinese generally are inclined to perceive themselves as hedonistic procrastinators than non-hedonistic procrastinators.

Hypothesis 5b: Those who lived abroad perceive themselves as more of hedonistic procrastinators than those who have never lived abroad.

Hypothesis 6a: Tradition, conformity and achievement are negatively related to the hedonistic procrastination.

Hypothesis 6b: Hedonism and stimulation are positively related to the hedonistic procrastination.

4 Methodology

This section discusses four main aspects in detail, namely research design, sample strategy, data collection procedure and measurement, adding reliability and validity to the study.

4.1 Research design

A survey, more specifically, a standardized questionnaire-based survey combined with vignette design, was applied to test the hypotheses that have been developed. The reason is as follows:

(15)

First, a survey is considered to be the best strategy for current research, because it is a feasible approach to examine a large amount of people (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009, p. 144).

Secondly, using standardized questions and statement helps to improve the consistency and reliability of the study (Saunders et al., 2009, p. 373). Questions, for instance, on gender, age, nationality and countries used to live, were firstly included in the survey. Besides this

information Schwartz’s cultural values self-report questionnaires was used as a measurement of independent variables.

In addition, a vignette design was mainly used in this study instead of other self-report survey scales, for example, Pure Procrastination scale or the Irrational Procrastination scale, which have proved to be equally functional for measuring general procrastination (Steel, 2010). Vignette methodology fits particularly into the purpose of those studies, where the variables and construct that are intended to measure need to be strictly controlled and manipulated (Atzmuller & Steiner, 2010). The vignettes refer to concrete examples of people and their corresponding behavior that are described in a story format (Collins, Hanlon, More, Wall & Duggan, 2009). Experimental vignette methodology (EVM) is described as an approach aiming to resolve the dilemma of a high confidence level in internal validity but low external validity when conducting experimental research, compared with investigating in

non-experimental research which minimizes the threat to external validity but fails to develop a strong and clear causal relationships (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014 ).

Specifically, two vignettes were designed in this study, which test experimental groups with two different procrastinating behaviors presented by a paper people in a particular context. The number of the vignette that had been set up was based on the criteria that too many vignettes will result in information overload while too fewer could limit the internal validity of the study (Weber, 1992). Paper people studies function as demonstrating respondents with vignettes in a written form and then require them to make explicit decisions or preference (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). Unlike the other type of vignette design: Policy capturing and conjoint analysis studies, paper people doesn’t contains any implicit process that is intended to capture participant’s judgement by using carefully manipulated variables (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). A between-person design was implemented as it is only a pilot study on a cultural basis. Atzmuller and Steiner (2010) explain that a between group study proceeds as

(16)

each respondent making only one vignette so that comparison are drawn only across respondents. Therefore, the bias of a between group study is that the participant may forgo the chance of understanding the big picture of the story. Incomplete or unintended answers may occur as a result of insufficient knowledge of the context (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). Two were designed carefully to avoid such bias, provided with baseline information and a similar background for all participates to adequately refer to.

However, one disadvantage of vignette design is the difficulty of specifying the number and the degree of the controlled variables (Aguinis & Bradley, 2014). Lohrke et al. (2010) state that the criticism lies in the decision making procedure of ruling out the variables which could turn out to be the important factors. To address this fundamental issue, Aguinis and Bradley (2014) suggest involving an orthogonal design of factors and lifelike based Vignettes.

4.2 Sample

The focus group of this thesis was on Chinese, specifically Chinese who lived abroad and Chinese who have spent their whole life in China. The survey strived to reach as many people as possible. Despite the advantages that mentioned above about the research design, some limitations inevitably became a threat to the survey design. One criticism and concern could be how many questions can be most acceptably included, giving the consideration of

potential participant are generally reluctant to finish a questionnaire containing lots of

question (Saunders et al., 2009, p.144-145). Another concern was that due to the convenience sampling method, the sample might not be representative of the whole population. As a result, low external validity could be the potential bias of the thesis. Details on this issue are

provided in the discussion section.

4.3 Data collection

An internet based questionnaire was used to reach the sample that consists of two types of Chinese. The website www.qualtrics.com was used to design and distribute the questionnaire as it is quite user-friendly and at the same time allows multiple functions that are required in this survey. Of the most importance, the data can be collected digitally through sending out the ULR of the questionnaire page, which later contributes to the exporting and analysing

(17)

process. As Saunders et al. (2009, p.365) suggest, it saves a lot of time. In addition, this method allows the most efficient way of collecting data in a relatively short period considering the respondents are not same location-based. More than 200 respondents were reached within four days. Despite spreading out the survey through my own personal network, some friends helped to reach more respondents by distributing the survey in their networks.

One thing that is worth mentioning is that in order to get higher rate of participation, an interesting introduction was written (provided in the appendix B). The introduction letter also expressed the appreciation to the respondents for participating in the survey and contact was given in case any questions that have risen. It worked very well since many positive feedbacks were given.

4.4 Measures

This section discussed the measurement of the survey from background information, four vignettes, and the measurement for cultural values.

First, based on the literature review, this thesis was going to examine two specific situations of procrastination, namely procrastination caused by indecisiveness and triggered by

distraction from irrelevant events. One of two vignettes about Jack and one of two vignettes about Alex were given. In order to study individual’s perception towards procrastination, attitude scales are developed to measure whether someone is more favorable or less favorable, higher or lower than others in terms of a single issue (Ford, 1950). Two questions were

designed to determine attitudes. Appropriateness was measured on a five point scale ranging from 1 (not at all inappropriate) to 5 (very appropriate). The likelihood of acting in the same way as in the vignettes was determined on a five scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much). First, a factorial ANOVA was used to test whether there is statistical evidence showing the differences of attitudes towards two types of procrastinations that exist between two groups of young Chinese. Then, a Pearson Correlation was used to explore the possible correlations between procrastinations and cultural values. Since vignette 1 and vignette 2 were parallel vignettes portraying two totally opposite ways of dealing things in the same setting( procrastinator and none procrastinator), the scores of two independent variables were computed into the same direction respectively so that the actual value of responses was

(18)

captured in the analysis. So as for vignette 3 and vignette 4. Lastly, independent sample t-tests were conducted to see if there were differences in cultural values between young Chinese who lived abroad and who did not. Four vignettes are presented as follows:

Vignette 1:

Jack is a young professional who just got a full-time internship at an investment bank. He is thinking about participating in the 42 km Marathon in three months for a fundraising project which aims to help blind people. This project could be a very brilliant and sweet birthday present for her mum who is blind. However, in order to do this, he obviously needs training and diet planning.

For his job Jack has never been so successful so he is afraid that he would lose it. As Jack is setting up his mind whether doing the run or just buys an expensive present, he encounters quite some difficulties. “On one hand, I really don’t want to eat “healthy” because I need burger and fries to get my energy back at the end of the day and obviously if I do the training, I would have no free time spending with my mum and my friends. But on the other hand, I would have made my mum so happy if I can manage both at the same time. I could not decide for myself, maybe I should talk to Rose (Jack’s big sister) since she always got my back. The worst case, if I made the wrong decision, I wouldn’t feel that bad because she is partially responsible.” As the first months have passed, Jack still has not made up his mind doing what and how to proceed.

Vignette 2:

Jack is a young professional who just got a full-time internship at an investment bank. He is thinking about participating in the 42 km Marathon in three months for a fundraising project which aims to help blind people. This project could be a very brilliant and sweet birthday present for her mum who is blind. However, in order to do this, he obviously needs training and diet planning.

Jack has never been so successful in his job and he is afraid that he might lose it.

He knows time is running and he has to decide quickly whether doing the run or just buy an expensive present. “On one hand, I really don’t want to eat “healthy” because my job is so stressful. I need burger and fries to get my energy back at the end of the day. And obviously if I do the training, I would have no free time spending with my mum and my friends. But on the other hand, I would have made my mum so happy if I can manage both at the same time. So it’s time to be decisive and choose rationally for myself. I have to be responsible for my

(19)

decision because I will live with the consequence of my choice.” The next day, he made up his mind doing the run and started making a training plan.

1. How appropriate do you find Jack‘s behavior?

1. Not at all inappropriate 2 somewhat inappropriate 3 neutral 4 appropriate 5 very appropriate

2. How much Jack is like you?

1. Not at all 2 rather not 3 not much nor little 4 somewhat 5 very much

One of two vignettes was randomly assigned to each respondents while the other vignette was not presented. The difference between these two vignettes was while vignette 1 described an indecisive procrastinator, vignette 2 presented a paper person who was not an indecisive procrastinator, which was labeled as “non-indecisive procrastinator” in the analysis. The general information and context were the same. The respondents were asked about the same questions.

Vignette 3:

Alex is a young programmer working in an IT company. He decides to take the exam and get an advanced certificate for programing. It could be a great advantage for his job since this computer language is getting more widely-used and the company is firing people owing to the fierce industry competition. In order to get the certificate, he needs to make a plan to self-study the online course. The exam is in three months. As Alex planned his training schedule, he realizes he is having a hard time following it. For example: recently he starts to take weekly horse riding course as a new hobby; also, he could not help himself going to techno parties with friends. “I really want to get this certificate. But I just could not resist all the other joys in my life. This indeed negatively interferes with my studying plans.” As the first month has passed, Jack has barely reached the studying goal that he has set for himself.

Vignette 4:

Alex is a young programmer working in an IT company. He decides to take the exam and get an advanced certificate for programming. It could be a great advantage for his job since this computer language is getting more widely-used and the company is firing people owing to the fierce industrial competition. In order to get the certificate he needs to make a plan to self-study the online course. The exam is in three months. As Alex planned his self-studying schedule,

(20)

he is working hard to stick to it. Even though he has broad interests (horse riding/ techno parties) besides his stressful work, he sets up his mind firmly and pulls himself together. “I really want to get the certificate, so I am following my schedule. I won’t spoil myself doing what is temporarily satisfying me but results in a delay for my studying. He managed to reach his studying goal for the first month.

1. How appropriate do you find Alex’s behavior?

1. Not at all inappropriate 2 somewhat inappropriate 3 neutral 4 appropriate 5 very appropriate

2. How much Alex is like you?

1. Not at all 2 rather not 3 not much nor little 4 somewhat 5 very much

One of two vignettes was randomly assigned to each respondents while the other vignette was not presented. The difference between these two vignettes was while vignette 3 described an hedonistic procrastinator, vignette 4 presented a paper person who was not an hedonistic procrastinator, which was labeled as “non-hedonistic procrastinator” in the analysis. The general information and context were the same. In addition, the respondents were asked about the same questions.

Next, we measured seven values that were expected to have associations with

procrastinations using Portrait Value Questionnaires Inventory (PVQ; Schwartz, 2003), which including 21 PVQ items for ESS (European Social Survey) that served as

measurements. In fact, the Schwartz (1992) Value Survey (SVS), which is rated by the respondents based on 56 specified items demonstrating one’s life guiding principles, is the most widely used measurement in studying cross-cultural topics. However, Schwartz(2003) finds that the length of SVS inhibits its use and people with low education find concepts hard to understand. As high convergent and discriminant validity are confirmed by Schwartz (2003), it is equivalent to use PVQ instead of SVS. Items were rated on a six scale ranging from 1 (not like me at all) to 6 (very much like me). Owing to the reason that self-direction was a very important attribute intended to measure, one extra question deriving from the original recommendation 40 PVQ (Schwartz, 2003) was added. The of final number of questions was 22.

(21)

In addition, since the questionnaire was targeted on Chinese, it was entirely translated into Chinese from the English version. Back translation was used to increase the internal validity of the survey. Back translation refers to another person who is blind to the source survey translates the translated survey back into the original language and then comparison is drawn to assure the validity of the translation (Beaton, Bombardier, Guillemin & Ferraz, 2002). In this thesis, one bilingual translator (English and Chinese) was kindly asked to do the back translation. Some subtle changes were made to the Chinese version before distributing it.

Finally, the sequence of the questionnaires aimed to design in a user-friendly and logical fashion. The background information including some straightforward demographic questions was firstly presented to help the respondents to get used to the questionnaire. Then, it was followed by two vignettes that addressed indecisive procrastination and two vignettes focused on hedonistic procrastination. One of the two parallel vignettes was randomly distributed among the respondents by Qualtrics evenly. As a result, the respondent had to answer two questions for both of the vignettes that he was assigned to. Lastly, 22 questions concerning the value were given on a Scale Likert. In order to get more accurate answers, the vignettes were carefully designed to display on the same page as the questions instead of separating them in case any important information was missed from memory. A procedure bar was kindly designed to appear on the foot of the page so that respondents were fully informed of how much they had accomplished considering they might very easily get impatient. In addition, an embedded function enabling “forced answer” was decided to implement on all compulsory questions since this helped to increase the number of valid responses in the end. The full version of the questionnaire is presented in Appendix B.

5 Results

In this section, the outcome of the experiment is illustrated and explained. Respectively, descriptive statistics, result of factorial ANOVA analysis, regression analysis and independent sample t-test are used in correspondence to the construct in the experiment design to evaluate and examine the relation between the variables.

(22)

5.1 Descriptive statistics

5.1.1 Sample characteristics

The number of people who started the survey was 204 in total, however, in the end, 13 surveys had been confirmed to be incomplete and invalid. Therefore, the ultimate number of valid surveys was 191. In addition, the minimum number of 30 respondents for each group had been reached. Vignette 1 and Vignette 3 had 93 respondents respectively while Vignette 2 and Vignette 4 both reached 98 respondents. In addition, 80 people (41.9%) have or had overseas living experience and 111 people (58.1%) live their whole life in China. As it is shown in Figure 2 below and Table 8 in Appendix A, among those 80 people who had overseas living experience, 38 people (47.6%) stayed less than one year (more than three months), 29 people (36.3%) stayed from one year up to three years. Ten people (12.5%) lived from three years to five years and three people (3.8%) lived for more than five years. The Netherlands (36), Norway (9), UK (4), Canada (4), Hungary (4) turned out to be the top five countries that the respondents lived in. Europe included the most commonly lived countries while a few people lived in Thailand, Japan and other Asian countries (7). It was shown that nobody lived in any of Latin American countries or African countries. Moreover, the average age of respondents appeared to be 23.24 years old with a standard deviation of 2.692. This partially resulted from the convenience sampling method.

(23)

5.1.2 Data descriptions

Besides the sample characteristics, it is also useful to know some descriptive statistics to draw a general picture of the story. According to Table 10 in Appendix A, first, regarding Vignette 1, 93 responses were collected while 98 respondents were assigned to Vignette 2. For question “how appropriate do you find Jack’s behaviour” vignette 1 (indecisive procrastinator) had a mean of 2.23, referring to an average understanding between “somewhat inappropriate” and “neutral” and vignette 2 (non-indecisive procrastinator) had an average of 3.88, representing nearly “appropriate” attitude. For question “How much Jack is like you”, vignette 1 (indecisive procrastinator) scored an average of 3.38, between “not much nor little” and “somewhat” and vignette 2 (non-indecisive procrastinator) had a mean of 2.97, meaning a relative neutral attitude towards the question. Next, in terms of vignette 3 and vignette 4, for question “how appropriate do you find Alex’s behaviour” vignette 3 scored a mean of 2.20, standing for “somewhat inappropriate” and “neutral” attitude and for vignette 4, it was 4.35, showing a very high level of agreement towards “very appropriate” attitude. For question “How much Alex is like you?”, vignette 3 and 4 both had an average of 3, having a mean response of neutral attitude.

As for seven basic values, the mean differences between two subgroups distinguished by overseas living experience were worth reporting. Here, group 1 refers to those who had an overseas living experience and for group 2, it stands for those who stayed their whole life in China. Moreover, a higher score means a higher self-recognition on this value. First, as Table 1 below showed that for value self-direction, group 1 (M=4.14) scored slightly higher than group 2 (M=4.07). The same applied for hedonism with group 1 (M=3.89) and group 2 (M=3.81). Next, for stimulation, group 1 (M=4.37) was higher than group 2(M=4.06). Conversely, for achievement, security, tradition and conformity, the group 2 had a slightly higher average compared with group 1, respectively for achievement, group 1 (M=3.86), group 2 (M=3.87), for Security group 1 (M=3.89), group 2 (M=4.00), for tradition, group 1 (M=3.18), group 2 (M=3.29) and for conformity, group 1 (M=3.89), group 2 (M=3.96).

(24)

Have you lived abroad? N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Self-direction Yes 80 4.1375 .87743 .09810 No 111 4.0691 .89230 .08469 stimulation Yes 80 4.3688 1.14390 .12789 No 111 4.0631 1.18536 .11251 hedonism Yes 80 3.8875 1.06728 .11933 No 111 3.8108 1.05970 .10058 achievemen t Yes 80 3.8563 1.12000 .12522 No 111 3.8739 1.18219 .11221 security Yes 80 3.8875 .94459 .10561 No 111 3.9955 1.07131 .10168 tradition Yes 80 3.1750 .95831 .10714 No 111 3.2883 1.04349 .09904 conformity Yes 80 3.8875 1.07024 .11966 No 111 3.9595 1.07690 .10221

5.2 2 way- ANOVA (factorial ANOVA)

5.2.1 Factorial ANOVA of indecisiveness procrastination

Before conducting the regression analysis, a 2-way factorial ANOVA analysis was carried out to test hypothesis 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, 4a, 4b, 5a and 5b.

First, four assumptions of conducting a factorial ANOVA analysis were being examined, namely random sampling, independent groups, normal distribution and homogeneity of variance ( Pallant, 2013, p. 198). Since money and resource were very limited in this case, a convenience sampling method was used instead of a random sampling. However, the

independent group assumption was strictly followed in this analysis as a violation will lead to very serious consequences (Stevens, 1996, p. 238). Here, each observation was independent from each other. Moreover, four Levene’s tests for equality of error variances were not found to be violated for the homogeneity of variance assumption in terms of four factorial analyses. As it can be seen in the Table 9 in Appendix A, the results for hypothesis 1 was F (2, 184) = .271, P > .05, hypothesis 2 was F (2, 184) = 0.423, P > .05, hypothesis 4 was F (2, 184) = .609, P > .05, hypothesis 5 was F (2, 184) = 1.324, P > .05 respectively. Thus, homogeneity of variance assumption was guaranteed in this case. Lastly, for normal distribution, as

(25)

reasonably ‘robust’ and especially if it has a large enough (e.g. 30+) sample sizes, the violation of this assumption would not cause a problem. Furthermore, ANOVA analysis is suggested not to be very sensitive to moderate violation of normality. With various non-normal distributions are being used in simulation studies, false positive rate is shown that it will not influence the result too much by the violation of the assumption (Glass, Peckham & Sanders, 1972). In this case, the sample size had reached 191, with at least 30 participants in each observation, the normal distribution was assumed.

Next, hypothesis 1a proposed that Chinese generally perceive indecisive procrastination as an inappropriate behaviour and followed by Hypothesis 1b: Those who lived abroad perceive indecisive procrastination more inappropriate than those who have never lived abroad. The level of appropriateness of procrastination that respondents perceive were subjected to a two-way analysis of variance which has two groups of indecisive procrastinations ( procrastinator, non-procrastinator) and two groups of overseas living experience (lived abroad, never lived abroad ). All effects were set statistically significant at the .05 significance level.

As it can be shown in Table 2A and Table 2B below, the main effect of the perception

towards indecisive procrastinations yielded an F ratio of F(1, 187) = 198.7, p < .05, indicating that the mean score for was significantly lower for procrastination (M = 2.23, SD = .796) than for non- procrastination (M = 3.88, SD = .853). The main effect of living abroad was non-significant, F (1, 187) = 0.9, p > .05. The interaction between two variables yielded an F ratio of F (1, 187) = 4.3, p < .05, ηp2 = .023 revealed a significant effect of overseas living experience having on the perception of appropriateness towards indecisive procrastination with a small to medium size effect of 2.3%. The model as a whole explained 51.6% of variance in the sample while 50.8% of variance in the population was explained. According to Figure 3 below: marginal means plot, it can be concluded that Chinese who had overseas living experience perceive indecisive procrastination as a significantly more of an

inappropriate behavior than those who near lived abroad. Thus, hypothesiss 1a and 1b are supported.

(26)

Table 2A: Tests of Between-Subjects Effects

1. Indecisive procrastination: How appropriate do you find Jack‘s behavior?

Source Type III Sum

of Squares

df Mean

Square

F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model 133.667a 3 44.556 66.492 .000 .516 Intercept 1731.149 1 1731.149 2583.451 .000 .933 abroad_ .616 1 .616 .919 .339 .005 Vignette1/2 133.134 1 133.134 198.680 .000 .515 abroad_ * vignette1/2 2.907 1 2.907 4.339 .039 .023 Error 125.307 187 .670 Total 2063.000 191 Corrected Total 258.974 190 a. R Squared = .516 (Adjusted R Squared = .508)

Table 2B: Descriptive Statistics

1. Dependent Variable: How appropriate do you find Jack‘s behavior?

vignette Have you lived abroad? Mean Std. Deviation N 1 yes 2.16 .824 45 no 2.29 .771 48 Total 2.23 .796 93 2 yes 4.11 .867 35 no 3.75 .822 63 Total 3.88 .853 98 Total yes 3.01 1.288 80 no 3.12 1.077 111 Total 3.07 1.167 191

(27)

Figure 3

Then, hypothesis 2a and 2b were tested regarding the likelihood of Chinese perceiving themselves as an indecisive procrastinator and the influence of overseas living experience having on indecisive procrastination.

As it can be shown in Table 3A and 3B below, the main effect of perceived similarities to be an an indecisive procrastinator yielded an F ratio of F (1, 187) = 20.8, p < .05, indicating that the mean score for non-procrastinator was significantly higher for procrastinator (M = 3.38, SD = .932) than for non- procrastination (M = 2.97, SD = 0.936). The interaction between two variables yielded an F ratio of F (1, 187) = 2.521, p >.05, indicating a non-significant effect on the perception towards likelihood of being an indecisive procrastinator

procrastination between those who had overseas living experience and those did not have. Therefore, hypothesis 2a but 2b is supported.

(28)

Not a indecisive procrastinator: How much do you think Jack is like you?

Source Type III Sum

of Squares

df Mean

Square

F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model 18.974a 3 6.325 7.276 .000 .105 Intercept 1320.471 1 1320.471 1519.143 .000 .890 Vignette1/2 18.068 1 18.068 20.786 .000 .100 abroad_ .002 1 .002 .002 .963 .000 Vignette1/2 * abroad_ 2.191 1 2.191 2.521 .114 .013 Error 162.544 187 .869 Total 1554.000 191 Corrected Total 181.518 190 a. R Squared = .105 (Adjusted R Squared = .090)

5.2.2 Factorial ANOVA of hedonistic procrastination

Hypothesis 4a proposes Chinese generally perceive hedonistic procrastination as an

inappropriate behaviour and followed by Hypothesis 4b: Those who lived abroad perceive a higher level of appropriateness of hedonistic procrastination than those who have never lived abroad.

As can be seen in Table 4A and 4B below, the main effect of the perception towards

hedonistic procrastination yielded an F ratio of F (1, 187) = 330.8, p < .05, suggesting that the

Dependent Variable: How much do you think Jack is like you? vignett

e

Have you lived abroad? Mean Std. Deviation N 1 yes 3.27 .889 45 no 3.48 .967 48 Total 3.38 .932 93 2 yes 3.11 .867 35 no 2.89 .969 63 Total 2.97 .936 98 Total yes 3.19 .971 80 no 3.18 .985 111 Total 3.19 .977 191

(29)

mean score was significantly lower for procrastination (M = 2.20, SD = .773) than for non- procrastination (M = 4.35, SD = .829). The main effect of whether living abroad was not significant, F (1, 187) = .06, p > .05. The interaction between two variable yielded an F ratio of F (1, 187) = .04, p >.05, indicating a non-significant effect of overseas living experience having on the perception of appropriateness towards hedonistic procrastination. The model as a whole explained 64.6% of variance in the sample while 64% of variance in the population was explained. Thus, hypothesis 4a is supported but 4b is not supported.

Hedonistic procrastinator: How appropriate do you find Alex‘s behavior?

Source Type III Sum

of Squares

df Mean

Square

F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model 220.792a 3 73.597 113.605 .000 .646 Intercept 1995.749 1 1995.749 3080.646 .000 .943 abroad_ .041 1 .041 .063 .802 .000 Vignette3/4 214.274 1 214.274 330.754 .000 .639 abroad_ * vignette3/4 .024 1 .024 .037 .848 .000 Error 121.145 187 .648 Total 2361.000 191 Corrected Total 341.937 190 a. R Squared = .646 (Adjusted R Squared = .640)

How appropriate do you find Alex‘s behavior?

vignette Have you lived abroad? Mean Std. Deviation N

3 yes 2.20 .723 40 no 2.21 .811 58 Total 2.20 .773 98 4 yes 4.32 .917 40 no 4.38 .765 53 Total 4.35 .829 93 Total yes 3.26 1.348 80 no 3.24 1.343 111 Total 3.25 1.342 191

(30)

Finally, Hypothesis 5a proposed that Chinese generally are inclined to perceive themselves as hedonistic procrastinators than non-hedonistic procrastinators and followed by Hypothesis 5b: Those who lived abroad perceive themselves as more of hedonistic procrastinators than those who have never lived abroad.

The main effect (5a) of the perception towards hedonistic procrastination yielded an F ratio of F (1, 187) = .357, p > .05, As can be seen in Table 5A and 5B below, the main effect of whether living abroad was non-significant as expected, F (1, 187) = 0.004, p > .05. The interaction between two variable yielded an F ratio of F(1, 187) = 1, p > .05, suggesting a non-significant effect of overseas living experience having on the likelihood one perceiving himself as a hedonistic procrastinator. In all, the result failed to provide any significant statistics evidence. Therefore, hypothesis 5a and 5b are not supported.

Not a hedonistic procrastinator: How much Alex is like you?

Source Type III

Sum of Squares

df Mean

Square

F Sig. Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model 1.106a 3 .369 .399 .754 .006 Intercept 1635.814 1 1635.814 1771.211 .000 .905 abroad_ .004 1 .004 .004 .948 .000 Vignette 3/4 .329 1 .329 .357 .551 .002 abroad_ * Vignette 3/4 .921 1 .921 .997 .319 .005 Error 172.705 187 .924 Total 1857.000 191 Corrected Total 173.812 190 a. R Squared = .006 (Adjusted R Squared = -.010)

(31)

Dependent variable: How much Alex is like you? Have you lived abroad? Vignette

3/4 Mean Std. Deviation N yes 3 2.85 .921 40 4 3.07 .829 40 Total 2.96 .878 80 no 3 3.00 1.139 58 4 2.94 .864 53 Total 2.97 1.013 111 Total 3 2.94 1.053 98 4 3.00 .847 93 Total 2.97 .956 191 5.3 Correlation

Pearson correlation coefficient is used to find the possible relationship between various value dimensions and procrastinations as proposed in the Hypothesis 3a, 3b, 6a and 6b. Therefore, the correlations were conducted between eight values and four outcome variables regarding two types of procrastinations.

It is of importance to understand whether the violations of assumptions would lead to severely biased interpretations or whether the result is robust against the violation of the assumptions. Pedhazur (1997, p. 33) notes the essence of meaningful data analysis lies in understanding the various situations of the methods that are being used. Therefore, before conducting Pearson Correlation Coefficient analysis, four assumptions: independence of observations, normality, linearity and homoscedasticity were examined, according to Pallant (2013, p. 117). As being discussed before, all the observations were independent from each other. Hence, independence of observations was guaranteed. Linearity and homoscedasticity were checked through the observation of scatterplots in SPSS. Scatterplot observation provided valuable insight of whether the data can be free from the violation of linearity and homoscedasticity (Pallant, 2013, p. 123). The result of 32 scatterplots did not show any violation against assumptions of linearity and homoscedasticity. Furthermore, the normal distribution was assumed based on the sample size (191; >30). However, Outliers may have a significant effect on the outcome of correlation coefficient and thus influence the interpretation of the results (Pallant, 2013, p. 115). Osborne (2001) shows that removal of bivariate outliers

(32)

increase accuracy of results by greatly eliminating the probability of making Type I and Type II errors. Among twelve variables, two independent variables, namely “How much Jack is like you?” (Hypothesis 2) and “How appropriate do you find Alex‘s behavior?”(Hypothesis 4) were proven to have outliers by visually inspecting histograms and box plot in SPSS. Thus, the outliners, which are indicated in Figure 4A and 4B in Appendix A were removed.

Table 6: Correlations 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 1. How appropriate do you find Jack’s behavior? Vignette 1/2 Pearson Correlation 1 Sig. (2-tailed) N 191

2.How much Jack is like you?Vignette 1/2 Pearson Correlation .127 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .083 N 186 186 3. How appropriate do you find Alex’s behavior? Vignette 3/4 Pearson Correlation .136 .171* 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .066 .022 N 184 180 184

4.How much Alex is like you? Vignette 3/4 Pearson Correlation -.060 .322** .211** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .411 .000 .004 N 191 186 184 191 5.Self-direction Pearson Correlation -.158* -.075 -.089 -.061 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .029 .307 .230 .405 N 191 186 184 191 191 6.stimulation Pearson Correlation -.072 -.161* -.092 -.084 .640** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .321 .028 .215 .250 .000 N 191 186 184 191 191 191 7.hedonism Pearson Correlation .007 .009 .073 .060 .317** .547** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .922 .901 .324 .410 .000 .000 N 191 186 184 191 191 191 191 8.achievement Pearson Correlation -.072 -.097 -.146* -.073 .407** .463** .363** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .319 .189 .047 .316 .000 .000 .000 N 191 186 184 191 191 191 191 191 9.security Pearson Correlation .017 .071 -.042 -.056 .151* _.161* _.207** _.404** ₁ Sig. (2-tailed) .820 .336 .567 .445 .037 .026 .004 .000 N 191 186 184 191 191 191 191 191 191 10.tradition Pearson Correlation -.044 .119 -.016 .082 -.059 -.060 .185* .169* .360** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .546 .105 .827 .262 .417 .408 .011 .019 .000 N 191 186 184 191 191 191 191 191 191 191 11.comformity Pearson Correlation -.072 -.014 -.169* .031 .067 -.020 .108 .273** .440** .468** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .319 .845 .022 .668 .360 .789 .136 .000 .000 .000 N 191 186 184 191 191 191 191 191 191 191 191

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

(33)

After the assumptions were confirmed, the analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis 3a, 3b, 6a and 6b. Since scores of 15 PVQ items were computed into seven variables that each stood for seven values (self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, achievement, conformity, tradition and security), the correlation test was based on the scores on attitude variables and seven basic value scores. As can be seen in the Table 6 above, the results showed some correlations were statistically significant. First, self-direction and attitude towards appropriateness of indecisive procrastination was negatively correlated, r (189) =

-.16, p < .05 with a R2 = .025. Next, Stimulation and attitude towards respondents’ likelihood of perceiving themselves as indecisive procrastinators had a weak negative correlation, r (184) = -.16, p < .05 with a R2 = .026. This finding was unexpected. Then, two significant negatively correlation was found between value and attitude towards appropriateness of hedonistic procrastination. Specifically, achievement and conformity had correlations of r (182) = - .15, p < .05 with a R2 = .021 and r (182) = - .17, p < .05 with a R2 = .029

respectively. No significant results were found between the rest of values: hedonism, security and tradition and the attitude variables. Neither did any significant correlation was discovered between self-direction, stimulation, achievement and conformity with the other attitude variables. However, the correlations between value attributes were not the focus of this thesis. Thus, it is not discussed in this thesis. Therefore, while Hypothesis 3a is supported and 6a is partially supported, Hypothesis 3b and 6b are rejected.

Interestingly, three weak to moderate positive correlations can be found significantly between the attitude variables. In detail, the likelihood of one perceiving himself as an indecisive procrastinator had correlations with both variables (appropriateness and likelihood) towards hedonistic procrastination, r(182) = .17, p < .05 with a R2 = .029 and r(184) = .32, p < .01 with a R2 = 0.10 respectfully. Moreover, in the Vignette 3 and 4 regarding the hedonistic procrastination, a weak positive correlation was found between two variables

(appropriateness and likelihood), r (182) = .21, p < .01 with a R2 = .045.

An extra correlation was conducted between three PVQ items that measured self-direction and attitude towards indecisive procrastination (check Table 11 in Appendix A). The reasons are provided in the discussion section. As presented in the previous discussion, self-direction was proved to have a significant negative correlation with attitude towards the

(34)

slightly different but interesting story. Particularly, two PVQ items “It is important to him to make his own decisions about what he does. He likes to be free to plan and to choose his activities for himself” and “It is important to him to be independent. He likes to rely on himself” had significant negative correlations with attitude towards the appropriateness of indecisive procrastination, with r (189) = - .195, p < .01 with a R2 = .038 and r (189) = .157, p < .05 with a R2 = 0.025 respectfully. The PVQ item “Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to him. He likes to do things in his own original way” had no significant correlation with the attitude.

5.4 Independent sample t-test

Independent t-test was used to find the differences in value between those who had overseas living experience and those who did not in an attempt to further confirm whether the value attributes differ among two groups for procrastinations. However, seven independent sample t-tests did not give any significant results in the expected differences in cultural value scores between two groups according to the Table 7 below.

(35)

6. Discussion

In this section, the results are interpreted and implications for hypotheses are proposed. In addition, some limitations of the thesis are discussed in detail. Finally, the suggestion for future research is given.

6.1 Indecisive procrastination

First, the factorial ANOVA shows that overseas living experience does make a difference in the attitude of appropriateness towards indecisive procrastination among young Chinese. While inappropriateness towards indecisive procrastination is generally perceived by young Chinese, significant difference indicates a higher level of appropriateness is perceived by Chinese who has never lived abroad. This conclusion is in line with the hypothesis 1a and 1b that were developed regarding the attitudes. Schwartz (1994) concludes that personal freedom, autonomy and self-direction are perceived as less important concerns for Eastern societies. It is assumed that Chinese who has never lived in Western societies may find it hard or

impossible to prioritize his own internal needs because of the social norms and tradition that act upon on him. Even, some of them may be to different extent in the ignorance of the existence of autonomy. As expected, correlation showed the lower one values self-direction, the more he considered indecisive procrastination as an appropriate behavior.

Schwartz (2003) finds that in terms of items measuring self-direction, items 1 “ Thinking up new ideas and being creative is important to him. He likes to do things in his own original way” and item 2 “It is important to him to make his own decisions about what he does. He likes to be free to plan and to choose his activities for himself” had a relatively low inter-correlation (.282) in the UK sample. It is assumed that two questions are measuring slightly different aspects of self-direction. In correspondence to that, extra correlations between three items measuring self-direction and attitude towards indecisive procrastination were being conducted. As the results showed that item 2 and item 3 “It is important to him to be independent. He likes to rely on himself” have a significant weak to moderate negative correlation with the attitude while item 1 did not. This provides indication for further consideration about what to measure exactly when studying procrastination. As autonomy and independence are salient attributes when coming to making a decision, creativity and curiosity which are also considered as parts of self-direction may turn out to be not.

(36)

This leads to the question of why there is no significant difference between two groups (had overseas living experience/did not have) regarding self-direction scores. Berry and Annis (1974) state that acculturation is a multidimensional procedure affected by diverse aspects of functioning in various ways. Consequently, acculturation proceeds on the basis of the

relevant dominant position of each value that lies in different culture. People may find themselves more reluctant to change those values which are relatively importance for their culture while easier to change those values that are less important to the tradition culture (Bond & Young, 1982). Moreover, Feldman and Rosenthal (1990) find that Chinese culture is greatly and fundamentally distinguished from Anglo-Western cultures in perceiving autonomy and independence. That is to say, for Chinese who lived abroad for a relatively short period may not be profoundly influenced by direction even though the average self-direction score is generally higher for them in the sample than young Chinese who lived their whole life in China.

Hypothesis 2a indicates young Chinese generally rate themselves towards behaving like an indecisive procrastinator. This proves the prevalence of indecisive procrastinator for young Chinese. However, 2b is rejected. The non-significant result of 2b could be partially

explained by the acculturation theory that was discussed above. In addition, an inconsistent of attitude-behavior relationship that appeared in various social studies may also be the indicator of the inconsistency between hypothesis 1a/b (the attitude towards appropriateness of

indecisive procrastination) and hypothesis 2a/b (the actual indecisive procrastination behavior). Ajzen and Fishbein (1977) find that even for attitude measurement which is composed of well-considerate instruments may not be able to fully explain and understand the social phenomenon. There have been many reports of relatively low or insignificant relations between behavioral criteria and attitudinal predictors (Campbell, 1963). Behaviors of interest must be defined and investigated first before attempting to explain a phenomenon with regard to an attitudinal analysis (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977), taking into accounts of the time and context of the occurrence. Elements such as time, identical target, action and context are considered to be the contingent factors when using measures of attitude to serve the explanation of behavior. In this thesis, the inconsistent result may be partially due to the insufficient control factors taken into consideration. For instance, Lowinger, He, Lin, and Chang (2014) underline that the important roles of language barriers and academic self-efficacy play on the procrastination for Chinese international students who start studying in another country. It is demonstrated that the change of attitude towards indecisive

(37)

procrastination is not sufficient confirmation for individuals’ ability to change their behaviors (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977). As two-thirds of the respondents in this study were students, procrastinations may be greatly though not solely related to academic tasks. Thus, context factors such as stressors that caused by moving to an entirely new environment and the difficult level of tasks may all influence the actual behavior despite of their attitude.

The correlation between stimulation and indecisive procrastination has been proven to be salient. People score high on stimulation pursue a life with excitement, novelty and challenge (Schwartz, 2003). The higher on this scale one rate himself, the less likely he will be an indecisive procrastinator. The sensation seeking theory indicates that some people are more affected when having insufficient level of stimulation than others. The accumulating state of mood can turn into the moderator for irrational behavior, for example, procrastination

(Simpson & Pychyl, 2009). However, whether indecisive procrastination’s negative association with stimulation is moderated or mediated by other factors is worth of further investigation.

6.2 Hedonistic procrastination

As non-significant differences were found in 4b, 5a and 5b, only 4a was shown to have a significant effect on hedonistic procrastination among young Chinese. It means that for hedonistic procrastination, young Chinese generally recognize it as an inappropriate behavior. However, despite that, no evidence shows that young Chinese are more inclined to behave like hedonistic procrastinators or young Chinese lived abroad perceive a different level of appropriateness towards hedonistic procrastination than those who didn’t lived abroad. The reason for this may be attributed to the acculturation theory. In empirical studies, Chinese youth are found to value conformity more than other values such as autonomy (Yang, 1972). As conformity is very important value that roots in Chinese culture, young Chinese may find it difficult to prioritize other values in a relatively short period of time when adapting to a new environment.

As a negative association was found between conformity and attitude towards hedonistic procrastination, the reason can be explained as follows. While Americans seek self-actualization and individual happiness with less intention to get authorization from the

What is the relation between cultural values and procrastination among young Chinese? : specifically indecisive procrastination and hedonistic procrastination