Male Partners’ Investment and Alternatives as Correlates of Women’s Coerced First Sexual Intercourse in Chinese Dating Relationships: A Social Exchange Perspective

Social exchange theory has great potential to help our understanding of dating partners’ sexual interaction. Yet, to our knowledge, there is still no empirical study applying this theory to explain sexual coercion in the context of intimate relationships. This study examined the relationship between male partners’ social exchange variables (investment and alternatives) and women’s coerced first sexual intercourse in dating relationships, within both gender samples (not dyadic data). A total of 927 valid questionnaires were collected by purposive snowball sampling in five main cities in China of college students who were currently in a romantic relationship. Results showed that in the male sample, male partners’ investment significantly and positively correlated with emotional manipulation coercive tactics, and their alternatives significantly and positively predicted defection threats as coercive tactics. In the female sample, there were no such observations. The research hypotheses of this study have been partially supported, and its implications and limitations are discussed