Why Does Taiwan Identity Decline?

Abstract

Since 1992, the percentage of Taiwanese identifying as “Taiwanese only” increased by 50%. The literature explains the increase by generation, democratization, and military threat. None of these foresees the decline of Taiwan identity between 2016 and 2018. We argue that the decline can be explained by issue ownership + hedging. After the Democratic Progress Party (DPP) won both the presidency and the Congress for the first time in 2016, DPP’s performance was used by voters to evaluate the utility of Taiwan identity. Propensity score matching and regressions on three groups of surveys (TEDS, TISS, and TNSS) support the theory and rule out alternative explanations.