IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/soinre/v159y2022i3d10.1007_s11205-021-02789-2.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Ken Ka-wo Fung

    (Soochow University)

  • Chao-Lung Liu

    (National Changhua University of Education)

  • Ming-Lun Chung

    (National Changhua University of Education)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Ken Ka-wo Fung & Chao-Lung Liu & Ming-Lun Chung, 2022. "Bowling Alone in Taiwan? Political Trust and Civic Participation of Taiwanese and Their Appraisal of Liberal Democracy and Personal Wellbeing," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 1085-1102, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:159:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-021-02789-2
    DOI: 10.1007/s11205-021-02789-2
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11205-021-02789-2
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11205-021-02789-2?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ann L. Owen & Julio Videras & Christina Willemsen, 2008. "Democracy, Participation, and Life Satisfaction," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 89(4), pages 987-1005, December.
    2. Ward, George, 2015. "Is happiness a predictor of election results?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 61698, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Rebecca Weitz-Shapiro & Matthew S. Winters, 2008. "Political Participation and Quality of Life," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 6744, Inter-American Development Bank.
    4. Don‐yun Chen & Tong‐yi Huang & Naiyi Hsaio, 2003. "The Management of Citizen Participation in Taiwan: A Case Study of Taipei City Government's Citizen Complaints System," International Journal of Public Administration, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(5), pages 525-547.
    5. Miller, Arthur H., 1974. "Political Issues and Trust in Government: 1964–1970," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 68(3), pages 951-972, September.
    6. George Ward, 2015. "Is Happiness a Predictor of Election Results?," CEP Discussion Papers dp1343, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    7. Luke Keele, 2007. "Social Capital and the Dynamics of Trust in Government," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(2), pages 241-254, April.
    8. Claire Wallace & Florian Pichler, 2009. "More Participation, Happier Society? A Comparative Study of Civil Society and the Quality of Life," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 93(2), pages 255-274, September.
    9. George Ward, 2020. "Happiness and Voting: Evidence from Four Decades of Elections in Europe," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 504-518, July.
    10. John Hudson, 2006. "Institutional Trust and Subjective Well‐Being across the EU," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(1), pages 43-62, February.
    11. Frey, Bruno S & Stutzer, Alois, 2000. "Happiness, Economy and Institutions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 918-938, October.
    12. Ding, Ning & Berry, Helen L. & O'Brien, Léan V., 2015. "One-year reciprocal relationship between community participation and mental wellbeing in Australia: A panel analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 246-254.
    13. Muller, Edward N. & Jukam, Thomas O., 1977. "On the Meaning of Political Support," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(4), pages 1561-1595, December.
    14. Kevin B Smith & Matthew V Hibbing & John R Hibbing, 2019. "Friends, relatives, sanity, and health: The costs of politics," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(9), pages 1-13, September.
    15. Iddisah Sulemana & Elijah Agyapong, 2019. "Subjective well‐being and political participation: Empirical evidence from Ghana," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(3), pages 1368-1386, August.
    16. Marta Portela & Isabel Neira & Maria del Salinas-Jiménez, 2013. "Social Capital and Subjective Wellbeing in Europe: A New Approach on Social Capital," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 493-511, November.
    17. Mariska Horst & Hilde Coffé, 2012. "How Friendship Network Characteristics Influence Subjective Well-Being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 107(3), pages 509-529, July.
    18. Lucía Macchia & Anke C. Plagnol, 2019. "Life Satisfaction and Confidence in National Institutions: Evidence from South America," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 14(3), pages 721-736, July.
    19. Easton, David, 1975. "A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 435-457, October.
    20. André Pirralha, 2017. "Political Participation and Wellbeing in the Netherlands: Exploring the Causal Links," Applied Research in Quality of Life, Springer;International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, vol. 12(2), pages 327-341, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nikolova, Milena, 2016. "Minding the happiness gap: Political institutions and perceived quality of life in transition," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 45(S), pages 129-148.
    2. Iddisah Sulemana, 2015. "The Effect of Fear of Crime and Crime Victimization on Subjective Well-Being in Africa," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 849-872, April.
    3. Chadi, Adrian, 2015. "Concerns about the Euro and happiness in Germany during times of crisis," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PA), pages 126-146.
    4. Sergio Pinto & Panka Bencsik & Tuugi Chuluun & Carol Graham, 2021. "Presidential Elections, Divided Politics, and Happiness in the USA," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(349), pages 189-207, January.
    5. Marta Orviska & Anetta Caplanova & John Hudson, 2014. "The Impact of Democracy on Well-being," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 115(1), pages 493-508, January.
    6. Georgios Kavetsos & Ichiro Kawachi & Ilias Kyriopoulos & Sotiris Vandoros, 2021. "The effect of the Brexit referendum result on subjective well‐being," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 184(2), pages 707-731, April.
    7. Bruno Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2017. "Public Choice and Happiness," CREMA Working Paper Series 2017-03, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    8. Nattavudh Powdthavee & Anke C. Plagnol & Paul Frijters & Andrew E. Clark, 2019. "Who Got the Brexit Blues? The Effect of Brexit on Subjective Wellbeing in the UK," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 86(343), pages 471-494, July.
    9. Iddisah Sulemana, 2015. "An Empirical Investigation of the Relationship Between Social Capital and Subjective Well-Being in Ghana," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(5), pages 1299-1321, October.
    10. Eelco Harteveld & Tom van der Meer & Catherine E De Vries, 2013. "In Europe we trust? Exploring three logics of trust in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 14(4), pages 542-565, December.
    11. Xiwen Fu, 2018. "The Contextual Effects of Political Trust on Happiness: Evidence from China," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 139(2), pages 491-516, September.
    12. Powdthavee, Nattavudh & Plagnol, Anke C. & Frijters, Paul & Clark, Andrew E., 2017. "Who Got the Brexit Blues? Using a Quasi-Experiment to Show the Effect of Brexit on Subjective Wellbeing in the UK," IZA Discussion Papers 11206, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Alexandra Nonnenmacher & Jürgen Friedrichs, 2013. "The Missing Link: Deficits of Country-Level Studies. A Review of 22 Articles Explaining Life Satisfaction," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 110(3), pages 1221-1244, February.
    14. Isabel Neira & Fernando Bruna & Marta Portela & Adela García-Aracil, 2018. "Individual Well-Being, Geographical Heterogeneity and Social Capital," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 1067-1090, April.
    15. O'Donnell, Gus & Oswald, Andrew J., 2015. "National well-being policy and a weighted approach to human feelings," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 59-70.
    16. Artjoms Ivlevs & Michail Veliziotis, 2018. "Local-level immigration and life satisfaction: The EU enlargement experience in England and Wales," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 50(1), pages 175-193, February.
    17. Salvatore Bimonte & Luigi Bosco & Arsenio Stabile, 2020. "Integration and Subjective Well-Being Among Off-Site University Students," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 947-969, February.
    18. Tekleselassie, Tsegay Gebrekidan, 2016. "Three essays on the impact of institutions and policies on socio-economic outcomes," Economics PhD Theses 1316, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    19. Crowley, Frank & Walsh, Edel, 2018. "How important are Personal Ties, Trust and Tolerance for Life Satisfaction in Europe?," SRERC Working Paper Series SRERCWP2018-1, University College Cork (UCC), Spatial and Regional Economic Research Centre (SRERC).
    20. Andrés Rodríguez-Pose & Viola Berlepsch, 2014. "Social Capital and Individual Happiness in Europe," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 15(2), pages 357-386, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:soinre:v:159:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s11205-021-02789-2. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.