The Effect of Economic Perception on Taiwanese Identity

Abstract

This thesis intends to explore whether the national identity of Taiwanese is affected by citizens’ perceptions of Taiwan’s economy through their evaluations of government performance We propose three hypotheses to investigate the underlying mechanisms: 1) economic perceptions and Taiwanese identity are positively correlated when Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is the ruling party; 2) economic perceptions and Taiwanese identity are negatively correlated when Kuomintang (KMT) is the ruling party; 3) citizens’ evaluation of government performance mediates the relationship between economic perception and Taiwanese identity Samples used in the study are adopted from the “Taiwan’s Election and Democratization Study (TEDS) ” Utilizing surveys conducted from 2003 to 2016 there are 8 datasets equally shared between the DPP and KMT ruling periods Since Taiwanese identity the dependent variable of this study is a binary variable logistic regression models are utilized as the empirical strategy The results show that ones’ economic perceptions are significantly positively correlated with their Taiwanese identities in the DPP ruling period (2003-2008L); while in the KMT ruling period (2008P-2016) there is a significantly negative correlation between ones’ economic perceptions and their Taiwanese identities As for mediation analysis ones’ evaluations of government performance substantially mediate the relationship between their economic perceptions and national identities during DPP ruling period; however the mediation effect is not significant during KMT ruling period

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Yi-Ting Wang (Supervisor)