Bowling Alone in Taiwan? Political Trust and Civic Participation of Taiwanese and Their Appraisal of Liberal Democracy and Personal Wellbeing

Based on a nationwide survey dataset collected by Taiwan’s Executive Yuan (2017) (N = 2737) and adopting structural equation modelling with bootstrapped method, we confirm that citizens’ positive appraisal of liberal democracy can foster subjective wellbeing via political trust but find civic partic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social indicators research 2022-02, Vol.159 (3), p.1085-1102
Main Authors: Fung, Ken Ka-wo, Liu, Chao-Lung, Chung, Ming-Lun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Appraisal
Citizen participation
Citizenship education
Democracy
Evaluation
Exceptions
Gender relations
Human Geography
Liberal democracy
Microeconomics
Original Research
Participation
Political participation
Politics
Public Health
Quality of Life Research
Social Sciences
Sociology
Structural equation modeling
Trust
Well being
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Summary:Based on a nationwide survey dataset collected by Taiwan’s Executive Yuan (2017) (N = 2737) and adopting structural equation modelling with bootstrapped method, we confirm that citizens’ positive appraisal of liberal democracy can foster subjective wellbeing via political trust but find civic participation irrelevant in this model. The proposed model remains significant after age, education, residency and personal income are controlled. The only exceptions are the gender effects in the relationship between appraisal of liberal democracy and political trust and that between political trust and civic participation. The former is positively stronger for female, whereas the latter is negatively stronger for male. While civic participation has long been widely accepted as a foundational component of any consolidated democracy, empirical evidence of this study calls for reflection on the application of this notion in an East Asian setting.
ISSN:0303-8300
1573-0921
DOI:10.1007/s11205-021-02789-2