How social capital influence university student’s future expectation in Hong Kong

The social capital theory has been well developed and applied in different social sciences research aspects. The impact of social capital on an individual’s future orientation was less discussed. This study aimed to investigate how social capital influences students' future expectations in Hong Kong. Besides the traditional form of capital, online social capital was added in the present study to investigate the influence of the internet in current society. 300 university students were recruited for the study. The quantitative analysis research method was conducted to investigate the relationship of three forms of capital, and their effect value on students' future expectations. The results showed that the three forms of capital were positively significantly associated (economic-, offline social-, and cultural-capital). Moreover, social capitals predicted 61% of the university students' future expectations (p < .001). The result suggested that social capital was an important factor that affect university students’ future expectations in Hong Kong. On the other hand, the result showed that online social capital was not significantly associated with economic capital. Further study is needed to investigate online social capital and its position in the development of social capital theory.