SSC Regular Seminar Series kicked off in November

Every academic year, the Department of Social Sciences (SSC) holds the Regular Seminar Series to provide our academic and teaching staff with the opportunity to present their latest research projects or knowledge transfer activities. Two presentations are arranged for each seminar session.

The first seminar session of the Regular Seminar Series 2021-2022 was held on 24 November 2021. In it, Dr Tan Weiqiang, Associate Professor of SSC, explored the causal effect of terrorist attacks on the household consumption structure, while Dr Eric Chong King-man, Assistant Professor of SSC, examined the relationship between online and offline civic participation among Hong Kong youths. Dr Steven Hung Chung-fun, Assistant Professor of SSC, was the moderator of the session.

Using daily transaction data at the individual bank account level, Dr Tan’s latest research indicated that terrorist attacks have a significant impact on individual strategic consumption choice. He presented an interesting observation in the seminar: in a city hit by a terrorist attack, consumers’ credit-card spending ratio per day increased by 0.19% – a 4% cumulative effect during a three-week period. The credit-card spending ratio, which can be used to determine a household’s consumption strategy, is calculated by dividing the spending by credit card by the total expenditure of both credit card and debit card accounts. Such causal effect is fast and non-persistent.

Dr Chong shared the findings of his latest research on the relationship between online and offline civic participation among young people (15 to 29 years old) in Hong Kong. His research found that online civic participation has a positive correlation with offline civic participation. “Online discussions about social issues are correlated with their civic participation in a real-life situation, though they tend to engage themselves in online civic participation rather than real-life civic participation,” he said.

Other sessions of the Regular Seminar Series 2021-2022 will be hosted in December 2021 and February, March, April and May 2022. Details are as follows: