Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities Who feels secure in customary tenure and why? A triangular framework of perceived tenure security in China's small property right housing Mengzhu Zhang, Shenjing He ⁎ Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China The University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Institute of Research and Innovation, Shenzhen, China ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Customary tenure Tenure security Social capital Housing informality Small property right housing ABSTRACT Customary tenure is inherent to the informal urbanisation process and institutional ambiguity in the developing world. However, factors that influence perceived tenure security remain poorly understood. We develop an analytical framework to understand the constitutive and heterogeneous nature of perceived tenure security. We employ social capital theory to explicate the individualised perception of exogenous threats. Focusing on China's small property right housing (SPRH), we examine the proposed conceptual framework and uncover the het- erogeneous formation of perceived tenure security, which is shaped by homeowners' structural social capital that decides their capability of seeking backing power against external threats from the state and the village. Our hypotheses are substantiated by an analysis of empirical data collected from a household survey and ethno- graphic investigations in Beijing. Results show that homeowners with adequate structural social capital, namely, local buyers, those working in the public sector and more embedded in the community social network tend to perceive higher degree of security in their tenure. The inconsistent effects of villages' acquisition of political patronage for customary tenure on homeowners' perceived security suggest a triangular rivalry among the state, village and homeowners on the land rent of SPRH. 1. Introduction Informal settlement and customary tenure under institutional am- biguity amidst the rapid urbanisation processes are long-lasting phe- nomena in third-world (World Bank, 2003). Customary tenure refers to the ownership of land and house that is extralegally defined by informal rules, customs, and moral concepts (Fitzpatrick, 2005). Neoliberal economists critiqued this idea for discouraging investments and making land un-marketable ‘dead capital’, which impedes the economic growth and poverty alleviation of developing countries (de Soto, 2000). The key assertion made here is the exclusive role of legal titling in affording security to tenure that encourages investment in land and affords re- sidential stability, which thus calls for radical reform on customary tenure systems (de Soto, 2000). Paradoxically, extensive failures of formalisation programs in Africa and Latin America during the 1980s engendered the reconsideration of legal tenure not as the optimal model. This is because that, existing customary tenure in some cases, is adequate for reducing danger of encroachment and thus providing te- nure security (Fitzpatrick, 2005). Under the rubric of breaking the le- gal–illegal dichotomy of tenure right (Varley, 2002), ever-growing efforts have been made to elucidate the formation of perceived security on customary tenure and how it impacts informal landlords' socio- economic behaviour (Nakamura, 2016; Payne, 2001, 2002; Van Gelder, 2009). These insights theoretically and empirically unravel the het- erogeneous and constitutive nature of perceived tenure security, which is (re)shaped by the internalisation process of changing exogenous risks (Ferreira & Ávila, 2018; Payne, 2002; Van Gelder, 2009). Notwithstanding these localised yet fragmented efforts on under- standing the concept, perceived tenure security is yet to be adequately theorised in a coherent analytical framework. The structural institu- tional settings that produce exogenous threats and individualisation process of these threats should be considered. Therefore, this study aims to fill this research gap by advancing Van Gelder's (2009, 2010) tri- partite view on tenure security. Although van Gelder crystallises the distinctions and interrelations among legal, de facto and perceived te- nure security, how perceived tenure security diverges from de facto tenure security is not well addressed. Hence, we try to fill this gap by introducing social capital theory to explicate the individualised per- ception of threats and risks from external situations. In this regard, we relate the different perceptions of tenure security at the individual level https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102900 Received 9 July 2019; Received in revised form 18 May 2020; Accepted 10 August 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Urban Planning and Design & Social Infrastructure for Equity and Wellbeing Lab, Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China. E-mail address: sjhe@hku.hk (S. He). Cities 107 (2020) 102900 0264-2751/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T