Self-Control, Delinquent Costs, and Decisions to Crime in Chinese Adolescents: Implications for Preventive Intervention

Background: Juvenile delinquency is an emerging social problem in China. Thus, investigating the etiology of this phenomenon is imperative. Unfortunately, most of juvenile delinquency studies have been carried out in Western countries; theoretical-grounded research on Chinese adolescents’ delinquent conducts is rarely explored but is much needed. The study made pioneering effort to explore how self-control interacting with criminal considerations affects adolescents’ decisions to engage in delinquent conducts.

Methods: Data were collected using a cross-sectional survey design. Two different groups of Chinese adolescents were examined, with one group of 780 confined juveniles with delinquent records, while the other group of 1264 middle school students for comparsion. Participants ranged from age 14 to 18 (M=15.87, SD=1.02), and 54.1% of them had finished high school education. Most of participants were from village and town (90.3%). Structural equation modeling (SEM, computed using AMOS software) was preformed to examine whether self-control indirectly impacts adolescent delinquency through its impact on delinquent costs. Furthermore, group differences between delinquent and student adolescents were tested.

Results: SEM results showed a negative association between self-control and delinquency. Instead of a direct effect, self-control exerted an indirect impact on juvenile delinquency through the mediation role of criminal costs. The increased negative costs of delinquency (e.g., formal sanctions, parental disapproval, peer disrespect) were likely to result in the decrease of propensity to engage in delinquent behavior. This result indicates that individuals are less likely to perform delinquency when they feel attached to parents and peers and afraid of being punishment. Furthermore, significant group differences were observed between delinquent and student adolescents. Students reported high levels of self-control and low frequency of delinquent participation compared to their delinquent counterparts. Students generally had a higher level of risk perception that can partiality reduce negative influence of self-control, as it will remind adolescents of the potential costs for delinquent conducts.

Implications: The issues of juvenile delinquency should be emphasized during the social and economic development in contemporary China. The individual and situational factors of delinquency should be considered in making crime prevention policies. Preventative youth services can be more effective if more attention is paid to developing adolescents’ self-control and raising adolescents’ perceptions of potential costs of delinquency, so that their propensity to delinquent participation may be potentially prevented or reduced.