Empowering Chinese College Students to Prevent Sexual Assault in Post-MeToo Era: An Empirical Study of the Bystander Intervention Approach

Abstract

MeToo movement unveiled the high prevalence of sexual assault in Chinese colleges. To create a safer environment, many Chinese universities require students to engage in bystander intervention sessions, which encourages students to assess, identify, and interrupt the harmful situation. Drawing upon health belief model and theory of planned behavior, this study tests the effects of bystander intervention programs, exposure to news reports on MeToo movement, and institutional responses to sexual violence events on bystander intervention intention and behaviors. The results of an online survey ( N = 814) indicated that bystander intervention programs were effective in changing attendees’ perceived benefits, subjective norms, and bystander self-efficacy, which, in turn, led to increased bystander intervention intention and actual behaviors. Moreover, exposure to MeToo movement reports and institutional responses to sexual assault events were significant predictors of bystander intervention intention and behaviors via the mediation of perceived benefits, perceived costs, and subjective norms. The results provide valuable implications for developing effective bystander intervention programs in Chinese college communities.

Sexuality in China: A review and new findings

“…Once reported, people who had premarital sex would be labeled as “hooligans” and were subject to punishment by their danwei . They would be criticized by the danwei leader and required to practice self-criticism (Farrer and Sun, 2003). When extramarital sexual behavior was discovered, one would approach his/her spouse's danwei leader, who would remonstrate with and punish the adulterer.…”

“…Influenced by feminism and the “Me Too” movement, Chinese women are increasingly aware of sexual harassment (Chen et al, 2022; Lin and Yang, 2019; Mou et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2021). The nationally representative data of CHFLS 2000 and SSC 2006, 2010, and 2015 show that Chinese are experiencing less verbal sexual harassment but more behavioral sexual harassment (Pan, 2017).…”

#MeToo as a Connective Movement: Examining the Frames Adopted in the Anti-Sexual Harassment Movement in China

“…When adopting computational techniques to collect and analyze data, a specific and clear boundary for accurate data scrapping is needed in order to maximize the large-scale capacity of big data on the one hand and to avoid a huge amount of noise (i.e., irrelevant posts) on the other (Lewis et al, 2013). As such, considering the key characteristic of #MeToo movement (i.e., advocating voluntary disclosure of sexual harassment and sexual assault) and the unique characteristics of this movement in China (i.e., the prevalence and severity of sexual assault in colleges; H. Chen et al, 2020), in this study, the collected posts need to satisfy two criteria simultaneously: (a) The posts must have discussed sexual harassment or sexual assault cases voluntarily exposed by the victims themselves or their close friends and (b) the posts must have been about sexual harassment or sexual assault cases that occurred in colleges.…”

The Association Between Sexual Harassment and Mental Health Among Chinese College Students: Do Gender and Social Support Matter?

“…SH may damage the psychological health of Chinese college students more due to society’s conservative sexual culture and greater power disparity in universities compared to Western countries [ 6 ]. When being harassed, they may remain silent rather than seek support [ 6 , 7 ]. Upon disclosing SH experiences, victims are often treated unequally, censured by superiors, or become the target of rumours [ 6 ].…”

“…When being harassed, they may remain silent rather than seek support [ 6 , 7 ]. Upon disclosing SH experiences, victims are often treated unequally, censured by superiors, or become the target of rumours [ 6 ]. SH occasionally appears alongside suicide in Chinese news.…”