Life satisfaction and acculturation of European students in the Chinese context

Renzhong Peng, Chongguang Zhu and Na Liu ()
Additional contact information
Renzhong Peng: Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Chongguang Zhu: Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Na Liu: Jinchu University of Technology

Palgrave Communications, 2023, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Life satisfaction is a crucial aspect of psychological well-being for international students during the process of acculturation. Among international students in China, European students constitute a significant demographic, making it imperative to examine their life satisfaction. However, existing research has primarily focused on theoretical literature reviews regarding the factors that impact European students’ life satisfaction and acculturation, with few empirical investigations conducted. This study aims to explore European students’ perceptions of life satisfaction in acculturation to China and the factors affecting their life satisfaction in acculturation. Through three rounds of semi-structured interviews involving 27 European students, this study employed NVivo 12 software to conduct sentiment analysis on interview materials to investigate European students’ perceptions of life satisfaction. Additionally, a coding analysis was conducted to identify the factors affecting their life satisfaction in acculturation. The results from the sentiment analysis reveal that European students generally experience a relatively high level of life satisfaction while acculturating to China. The coding analysis highlights several factors that affect their life satisfaction during this process, including social activity, social support, academic performance, language proficiency, consumption, diet, transportation, and safety. These findings offer researchers and scholars a theoretical understanding of acculturation and life satisfaction research on European students in China and could be referential for international education administrators.

Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41599-023-02167-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palcom:v:10:y:2023:i:1:d:10.1057_s41599-023-02167-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/palcomms/about

DOI: 10.1057/s41599-023-02167-y

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Palgrave Communications from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().