Perception of Street Vendors

The safety needs of street vendors are always precarious. They do not care much about their health but only worry about not having a job, being robbed when selling, being pickpocketed when getting goods, worrying about unsold goods, worrying about their family in the countryside (father, mother, husband/wife, children) having an accident, getting sick...

- Third level: The need for emotional exchange and belonging ( love/belonging ) to a certain social group, the need to have a peaceful family and trustworthy friends.

Most street vendors have this need. They have to live far from their families and close communities, so they need to be loved and protected, to live with their spouses, or with their fellow villagers or fellow countrymen to rely on and help each other.

- Fourth level: The need to be respected and admired ( esteem ) - need to feel respected, admired, trusted and, more importantly, have a position in society and the community.

This need of street vendors is not guaranteed because they are people from the provinces who come to Hanoi to make a living. They are disrespected and despised by urban people because they are country people. Sometimes they are called rudely "this guava seller", "this other girl"...

For street vendors, this need is almost non-existent because they are disadvantaged and have low cultural level. When they do not have enough food and clothing, they cannot have the “freedom” to do whatever they want or “get whatever they want”.

The Marxist view on needs, starting from the assumption that human nature is the sum of social relationships, Rubinstein pays great attention to the relationship between humans and the surrounding environment. According to him, human needs represent the connection and dependence of humans on the surrounding world. To survive and develop, humans must always act to meet certain demands. Those demands are needs [12, p.183].

According to psychologist Kovaliov, needs are the demands of individuals and different social groups who want certain conditions for living and developing. Needs determine the social activities of individuals and classes.

and collective [17, p.93]. Needs are divided into 3 groups: material needs, spiritual needs and social needs.

Material needs are considered “essential conditions for human survival” [17, p.93]. It is the material need (need for money) that strongly urges people from the countryside to go to the city to sell goods. This urge is like a motive for activity associated with willpower and shows that effort to achieve the goal - needing money to support oneself and develop the family.

The next need is the need for labor. This need is an essential survival activity. This is shown when people lose the ability to work, they feel restless, stressed, and uncomfortable. People in the countryside used to work in the fields all year round, but now the fields are small, the work is leisurely, and they do not earn enough to feed their families. Therefore, they have to find other jobs to work to earn a living in addition to the fields. This is an essential need that is indispensable to them.

The last need is the need for cognition (understanding). The need to perceive objective reality helps people escape from external influences. At the same time, it helps them to perceive themselves and satisfy their own needs. The cognitive need of street vendors is the need for the benefits that street vendors bring to themselves and their families. Street vendors realize that the city can improve the difficult life in the countryside and after many years they have gained a lot of experience to help street vendors become more effective.

Thus, the needs of street vendors are quite diverse. At each point in time, one need may be more dominant and more urgent than another. But in general, street vendors have three dominant needs: the need for money, the need for labor (to work) and the need for cognition (to understand).

These needs have motivated rural people to go to the city to sell on the street, and at the same time, these needs also determine the thinking, feelings, and will of street vendors in the process of selling goods in Hanoi.

1.3.2. Perception of street vendors

In daily life, we often perceive things and phenomena and express our attitudes and actions. Through perception, people reflect the objective reality around them and their own reality.

Thus, cognition is the reflection of the objective world in the human mind, but it is not a simple, passive reflection, but a dialectical process based on the active activity of the subject in relation to the object. The subject's positivity is expressed: on the one hand, the subject impacts the objective world, on the other hand, humans are also creative in their activities to grasp the nature and laws of the objective world, making the objective world develop continuously [27].

From a psychological perspective, cognition represents the activeness of human thinking, the ability to reflect the properties of things, phenomena, and their relationships in objective reality through human practical activities. The process of living requires people to grasp and understand the laws of nature and society in order to effectively participate in transforming nature and society. In perceiving the world, people can reach different levels of cognition, from low to high, from simple to complex. The low level is sensory cognition, including sensation and perception. The high level is rational cognition, including thinking and imagination.

The street vendors' perception of their sales job was initially emotional. Some saw the move to Hanoi by others in the village to earn a living as a necessary step to improve their lives.

difficult. However, their awareness only stops at the level of knowing, imitating, and following. At the level of emotional awareness, street vendors feel a desire for street vending because they earn more money than farming in the countryside. They go to sell because they are invited to the city without understanding the life and work of street vendors, so they often take time at first to adapt, to "gain experience". At the level of rational awareness, with the participation of the thinking process and the experience of street vendor life in the city. The understanding of street vendors about working in the city has changed. They see the benefits of that job and begin to realize what to do and how to behave to be able to survive in the capital. They develop sales skills and gradually street vending becomes their "profession", on the other hand, they also gradually perfect the "personality of a street vendor".

In short, the awareness of street vendors is shown in that through their street vending work, street vendors perceive the meaning of street vending to the people of Hanoi, the positive and negative effects of street vending on street aesthetics, and how they perceive the future of their work.

1.3.3. Mood of street vendors

In psychology there are different views on mood:

DNVinatte in the theory of mood believes that mood is a complete psychological state in human social positivity.

AC Kovaliov believes that mood is an emotional state of an individual or a group. It is a unique synthesis and interaction of emotions. [17, p. 115]

According to physiologists, mood is a process of nervous excitement or inhibition that occurs at a certain level within a certain analytical system or throughout the cerebral cortex.

It can be said that mood is a relatively stable psychological state, with weak or medium intensity, depending on the situation. Mood is different from feelings and emotions in the meaning of events related to people. Mood plays an important role in the psychological life of each individual. It affects and governs all activities of personal or social life. Social mood reflects favorable or unfavorable living and working conditions. A prosperous economic situation will create a pleasant mood for people.

Thus, the mood of street vendors is their emotional state towards their family in the countryside, towards selling goods in the city, towards the monthly income they earn from street vending. This mood reflects the living conditions of street vendors, the advantages and difficulties when they make a living in Hanoi.

For street vendors, anxiety is a constant psychological state. Factors that affect the mood of street vendors often depend on whether their goods are selling well or not; whether they are caught by the police, fined, or cheated. In fact, the anxiety of street vendors has affected and dominated all their urban activities and even affected their daily income.

1.3.4. Behavioral skills of street vendors

Skills are commonly understood as the ability to perform an action or activity with results. However, the nature of skills is researched and mentioned by scientists from different perspectives.

Authors AG Kovaliov [16], S. Henry , (1981) [31] consider skills as the way of acting in accordance with the purpose in certain conditions. When referring to skills, authors Tran Trong Thuy [26], Dao Thi Oanh

[20] also emphasizes the ability to apply knowledge into practice. Thus, a common point about skills in the concept of the above authors is the emphasis on the method of action.

Meanwhile, ND Levitov and KK Platonov, GG Golubev view skills as the human ability to help them perform an activity effectively in new conditions [cited in 18]. Authors Vu Dung, Nguyen Quang Uan, Tran Quoc Thanh [6], [27], [25] also view having skills as the ability to apply knowledge about actions, or to manipulate actions according to the correct process to achieve the desired results. Thus, skills in these perspectives are not simply in the technical aspect of action but also in connection with the application of knowledge in certain conditions.

In recent years, when referring to professional skills, people do not only stop at the criteria of accurate results and flexibility, but also consider the attitude and motivation factors of the individual in performing the action with that skill. This approach considers skills from a broader perspective when it connects the elements of knowledge, techniques and values ​​(attitudes, beliefs) in the behavior of a certain activity. This approach is considered by JN Richard (2003) as behaviors that are expressed in external actions and are the result of the connection between theory and values ​​(attitudes, beliefs) [32].

Behavior is a person's reaction to the impact of others on them in a certain specific situation. It is shown in that people are not proactive in communication but proactive in reaction with choice, calculation, expressed through attitude, behavior, gesture. The way of speaking depends on the knowledge, experience and personality of each person to achieve the highest communication results.

Behavior in communication between sellers and buyers is the process in which sellers proactively react through words, attitudes, and gestures to have the most appropriate impact on the buyer's psychology in order to achieve the highest business goal of selling products.

Thus, in our opinion, the behavioral skills of street vendors are the ability to use language (verbal and non-verbal) to express awareness,

their emotions, feelings, beliefs… towards customers and products with the aim of selling products and gaining high profits. For street vendors, sales skills are accumulated through sales experience. Therefore, these skills are simple and are not considered as the skills of the profession. The skills of street vendors are mainly demonstrated through recognizing each type of customer, the elderly or young people, children, women or men, easy-going people or difficult people… and the ability to respond to the ban on street vending, and the police's raids and seizures.

Chapter 1 Summary

Overview of research on the situation of labor migration in the world shows that people migrate to find a new and better life. Research on the phenomenon of street vending shows that in Vietnam, the problem of street vending has appeared for a long time, but there is no document that accurately states the time of its appearance. Street vending is considered a profession, it helps people migrating from rural areas to the city to have more income to support their families. The system of basic concepts of the topic and related concepts such as: Street vendors, needs of street vendors, awareness of street vendors, mood of street vendors, behavioral skills of street vendors help us understand the psychological and social characteristics of street vendors, which is general information about street vendors and their work, outstanding psychological characteristics: needs of street vendors, awareness of street vendors, mood of street vendors and behavioral skills of street vendors. Based on these theoretical concepts, we analyze the outstanding psychological and social characteristics of street vendor migrants in Hanoi in chapter 3: Practical research results.