M C Tsai
Biographic Data
| ID | 43993 |
|---|---|
| NAME | M C Tsai |
| GIVEN NAMES | M C |
| FAMILY NAME | Tsai |
| SIGNATURE | TSAI M C |
| AFFILIATIONS | National Taipei University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5300-9696 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 188 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 44 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Ethnic identity, self-esteem, and acculturation dispositions among indigenous adolescents in Taiwan
Upward transfer in Southeast China and Taiwan: Longitudinal trends of a family ritual
ObjectiveThis study examines the evolving patterns of intergenerational financial support in China and Taiwan.BackgroundThe paradoxical divergence (PD) perspective suggests that family behaviors in China resemble those of Western countries, while Taiwanese families exhibit more traditional practices despite their higher societal income. Conversely, the developmental idealism (DI) perspective anticipates a convergence over time as modern family be…
Postmaterialism, Generational Replacement and Value Change: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis of the US, Japan, Türkiye and China
Precarious Work During the Transition to Adulthood: A Latent Profile Analysis of Taiwan’s Young People
Relative Economic Position and Female Marriage Migration: Marrying Men in Taiwan Across Borders and Boundaries
How Does the Young Generation Become More Cosmopolitan? Evidence from Taiwan
This study investigates younger people’s perceptions of the influences of globalization by testing two hypotheses about the effects of educational socialization and Internet use. The potential influence of cross-border travel for the older population is examined for comparison. Using national samples from two waves of a large survey, we adopt a measure of attitudinal support for cosmopolitan openness. Empirical findings obtained from a mediation …
Protecting Farmers and Workers in Socialist Market Transitions: Mass Attitudes Toward Imports in Asia
After decades of market liberalization in Asian countries, how do people see trade, mainly imports, as potentially hurting domestic production? Do they consider them a threat to their societies' less privileged groups? Using survey data of China, Vietnam, and Cambodia, and citing Thailand as a comparative case representing a liberal economy in the Southeast Asian region, we examine the effect of economic interests, collectivist ideology, and poli…
The global, the local, and the Chinese: Vying cultures in Taiwan
The global, Taiwan’s and Chinese cultures have been vying for support from people in today’s Taiwan. This paper attempts to evaluate the glocalization hypothesis by way of an explanation. Using recent data collected in 2018 by the Taiwan Social Change Survey, it is found that acceptance of Chinese culture is high, despite the political tension across the Taiwan Strait. In contrast, global culture is least well received. Regression estimation of t…
Will you (still) love me tomorrow: Pro-Americanism and the China factor in Asia
This study seeks to investigate how amiable attitudes toward the United States as an ideal development model can be decreased by a predisposition toward accepting China as a favorable regional power. The empirical results from performing regression analysis of survey data in 13 Asian countries show that a positive evaluation of China in terms of its democratization level and having good influence in one's own country negatively correlate with a l…
Singlehood and childlessness: An age-period-cohort analysis of changing attitudes toward family in Taiwan (2005-2020)
Taiwan has registered an extremely low fertility rate during the past decades. Against this demographic trend, this study provides empirical evidence from an age-period-cohort analysis of the changing trends in acceptance of childlessness and singlehood during 2005-2020. Challenging the generational replacement hypothesis, the present study shows that the period effect is more consistent and substantial than the modest disparities across generati…
Kin, Friend and Community Social Capital: Effects on Well-Being and Prospective Life Conditions in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Good for the Common Good: Sociotropic Concern and Double Standards toward High- and Low-Skilled Immigrants in Six Wealthy Countries
Intergenerational Exchanges in East Asia: A New Look at Financial Transfers
Adult children's financial support for parents, which has been considered a primary representation of filial values in East Asian society, is not sufficient to understand contemporary familial reciprocation. To fully understand the detailed structure of intergenerational exchange in this region, this study proposes a new two-way typology to look at how parents both give and take with adult children. Using the 2006 East Asian Social Survey, the au…
Social Indicators Movement and Human Agency: Comment on Land and Michalos
Family, Work and Wellbeing in Asia
Domestic Politics, Cultural Conflict, and Global Exposure: Perceptions of Intergovernmental Organizations Across Asia
This study examines how Asian people conceive of the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, from three major arguments that have highlighted distinct sources of acceptance of, or distrust for, intergovernmental organizations (IOs). First, the outcome from multilevel analysis across eight Asian societies is supportive of the domestic proxies hypothesis, because the attitudes in favor of IOs parallel those developed from the e…
Working Overtime in East Asia: Convergence or Divergence
Working long hours has become a routinised part of life in East Asia. The different patterns of overtime across this region are understudied, however. This study represents a first systematic attempt to analyse overtime and its determinants in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China by testing hypotheses that specify the distinctive influences of employment status and job contracts on work hours. Class exploitation, post-industrialism and flexibilit…
Does Financial Assistance Really Assist? The Impact of Debt on Wellbeing, Health Behavior and Self-Concept in Taiwan
How Do Institutions Affect Happiness and Misery? A Tale of Two Tails
We generalize the discussion of the relevant determinants of happiness by asking the question if the same factors, more specifically the same institutional factors, affect happiness and misery. Focusing on five formal and informal factors and applying a combined approach to estimating happiness in four categories - misery, moderately dissatisfied, moderately satisfied, and happy - allows us to estimate if factors shift or skew the distribution of…
Control, Commitment and Contentment in Work: South Korea and Taiwan
Introduction to the Symposium of Manufacturing (Un)Happiness in East Asia: Work, Employment and Well-Being
Beyond Economic Interests: Attitudes toward Foreign Workers in Australia, the United States and East Asian Countries
We compare attitudes toward foreign workers between two wealthy Western and four developing East Asian countries, using data from the 2006 and 2008 Asian Barometer surveys to test hypotheses on economic interests, cultural supremacy, and global exposure. Respondent majorities in all six countries expressed high levels of restrictivism. Regression model results indicate a consistent cultural superiority influence across the six countries, but only…
Is the Easy Life Always the Happiest? Examining the Association of Convenience and Well-Being in Taiwan
The Effect of Global Exposure on Attitudes Toward Tradition, Patriotism, and Foreigners: Multilevel Analysis of 14 Asian Societies
In contemporary globalized world, exposure to ideas, people and goods from other countries increasingly feature daily lives. According to the globality theory, global experience and cross-border networking may influences one's value orientation in a way that an individual avoids seeing national tradition from a judgmental viewpoint but develop acceptant attitudes toward outsiders. The world society (WS) theory suggests educational socialization a…
Global Exposure and Openness: Comparative Analysis of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
This empirical study investigates the phenomenon of global mobility and networking at a quotidian level. A typology of global experience is constructed to characterize the qualitative distinctions among individuals' involvement in global flows. Derived from our understanding of individual border-crossing mobility and transnational relationships, we propose a system of four contrasts: the 'global exposed,' 'global surfer,' 'networked,' and the 'lo…
Does globali zation affect human well-being
Foreign Brides” Meet Ethnic Politics in Taiwan
A great number of women from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia recently arrived in Taiwan to marry men of lower social strata. Such an unusual pattern of migration has stimulated debates about the status and the citizenship of the new arrivals. This study analyzes Taiwanese responses toward these marriage migrants by using a national survey conducted in 2004. Three aspects of restrictive attitudes were tapped concerning these newcomers: (1) rights to…
Social Diversity, Institutions and Trust: A Cross-National Analysis
Sociable resources and close relationships: Intimate relatives and friends in Taiwan
This study uses data from a national probability sample in Taiwan to investigate sociable resources' effect on the practices of close relationships with relatives and friends. Results indicate that status-based sociable resources (i.e., education, income and having a job) and assets-based sociable resources (i.e., length of residence and home ownership) facilitate close relationships. While the status-based resources tend to forge close relations…
Does Political Democracy Enhance Human Development in Developing Countries: A Cross-National Analysis
Despite the considerable progress of human development (HD) in developing countries (DCs) during recent decades, vast differences still remain among such countries. The question thus arises of why these divergences persist. This cross-national study uses a larger sample of DCs to offer necessary testing of the impact of democracy on HD. This study adopts new measures of democracy featuring majority rule and political contention to estimate their …
Working Overtime in East Asia: Convergence or Divergence
Working long hours has become a routinised part of life in East Asia. The different patterns of overtime across this region are understudied, however. This study represents a first systematic attempt to analyse overtime and its determinants in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China by testing hypotheses that specify the distinctive influences of employment status and job contracts on work hours. Class exploitation, post-industrialism and flexibilit…
Dependency, the state and class in the neoliberal transition of Taiwan
The remarkable economic growth in Taiwan has served as a model of the developmental state as well as a source of scepticism about neoliberal policy for many less developed countries. However, since the mid-1980s Taiwan has gravitated from its previous statist model to the universally embraced 'market-orientated' restructuring. This study seeks to explain this neoliberal transition. A disaggregated approach is employed to break neoliberalism down …
Globally Happy: Individual Globalization, Expanded Capacities, and Subjective Wellbeing
Global Exposure and Openness: Comparative Analysis of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
This empirical study investigates the phenomenon of global mobility and networking at a quotidian level. A typology of global experience is constructed to characterize the qualitative distinctions among individuals' involvement in global flows. Derived from our understanding of individual border-crossing mobility and transnational relationships, we propose a system of four contrasts: the 'global exposed,' 'global surfer,' 'networked,' and the 'lo…
Good for the Common Good: Sociotropic Concern and Double Standards toward High- and Low-Skilled Immigrants in Six Wealthy Countries
Familial Reciprocity and Subjective Well-being in Ghana
The authors investigated variations in reciprocity and the impact of reciprocity on well-being in a West African society. They hypothesized that household size and income diversity encourage reciprocity, which in turn enhances subjective well-being. In empirical testing of these hypotheses the authors used the data of the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire of Ghana, a national sample of household heads (N males = 33,949, N females = 13,900) co…
Does Financial Assistance Really Assist? The Impact of Debt on Wellbeing, Health Behavior and Self-Concept in Taiwan
If GDP is Not the Answer, What is the Question? The Juncture of Capabilities, Institutions and Measurement in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report
Macro-Structural Determinants of Political Freedom in Developing Countries: A Cross-National Analysis
State power, state embeddedness, and national development in less developed countries: A cross-national analysis
Singlehood and childlessness: An age-period-cohort analysis of changing attitudes toward family in Taiwan (2005-2020)
Taiwan has registered an extremely low fertility rate during the past decades. Against this demographic trend, this study provides empirical evidence from an age-period-cohort analysis of the changing trends in acceptance of childlessness and singlehood during 2005-2020. Challenging the generational replacement hypothesis, the present study shows that the period effect is more consistent and substantial than the modest disparities across generati…
Intergenerational Exchanges in East Asia: A New Look at Financial Transfers
Adult children's financial support for parents, which has been considered a primary representation of filial values in East Asian society, is not sufficient to understand contemporary familial reciprocation. To fully understand the detailed structure of intergenerational exchange in this region, this study proposes a new two-way typology to look at how parents both give and take with adult children. Using the 2006 East Asian Social Survey, the au…
How Do Institutions Affect Happiness and Misery? A Tale of Two Tails
We generalize the discussion of the relevant determinants of happiness by asking the question if the same factors, more specifically the same institutional factors, affect happiness and misery. Focusing on five formal and informal factors and applying a combined approach to estimating happiness in four categories - misery, moderately dissatisfied, moderately satisfied, and happy - allows us to estimate if factors shift or skew the distribution of…
Economic and Non-economic Determinants of Poverty in Developing Countries: Competing Theories and Empirical Evidence
This study conducts cross-national research on 97 developing countries to test competing hypotheses of poverty. Four major theories from the social sciences were examined, including (1) economic development and openness, (2) geographical and demographical disadvantages, (3) regime characteristics and war, and (4) social policy and human capital enhancement, to determine their explanatory power by modelling the ratio of the poor to total populatio…
Kin, Friend and Community Social Capital: Effects on Well-Being and Prospective Life Conditions in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
Beyond Economic Interests: Attitudes toward Foreign Workers in Australia, the United States and East Asian Countries
We compare attitudes toward foreign workers between two wealthy Western and four developing East Asian countries, using data from the 2006 and 2008 Asian Barometer surveys to test hypotheses on economic interests, cultural supremacy, and global exposure. Respondent majorities in all six countries expressed high levels of restrictivism. Regression model results indicate a consistent cultural superiority influence across the six countries, but only…
Is the Easy Life Always the Happiest? Examining the Association of Convenience and Well-Being in Taiwan
Socioeconomic Differentials in Global Exposure: A Research Note on Taiwan
Compiling several national survey data collected in Taiwan during 2000–2008, this study examines the differences in individuals' exposure to globalization. The authors conceptualize global exposure in terms of cross-border, transnational network relationships and consumption of global cultural products. The authors explore the effects of socioeconomic differences (education, occupational status, and income) on four dimensions of individual global…
Upward transfer in Southeast China and Taiwan: Longitudinal trends of a family ritual
ObjectiveThis study examines the evolving patterns of intergenerational financial support in China and Taiwan.BackgroundThe paradoxical divergence (PD) perspective suggests that family behaviors in China resemble those of Western countries, while Taiwanese families exhibit more traditional practices despite their higher societal income. Conversely, the developmental idealism (DI) perspective anticipates a convergence over time as modern family be…
Postmaterialism, Generational Replacement and Value Change: An Age-Period-Cohort Analysis of the US, Japan, Türkiye and China
The State's Interest Seeking and Economic Stagnation in the Third World: Cross-National Evidence
In the development literature, the state's interest seeking is considered a crucial determinant of economic stagnation in the Third World. The internality inefficiency, opportunity costs, and structural disincentives generated by such a state constitute the key mechanisms responsible for slow growth. This study provides a major quantitative test of this hypothesis. A sectoral approach is proposed to measure the interest seeking of the state by us…
State power, state embeddedness, and national development in less developed countries: A cross-national analysis
Dependency, the state and class in the neoliberal transition of Taiwan
The remarkable economic growth in Taiwan has served as a model of the developmental state as well as a source of scepticism about neoliberal policy for many less developed countries. However, since the mid-1980s Taiwan has gravitated from its previous statist model to the universally embraced 'market-orientated' restructuring. This study seeks to explain this neoliberal transition. A disaggregated approach is employed to break neoliberalism down …
Taming a Leviathan: Geopolitics, State Power and the Making of a Development Regime in Taiwan
The current debate on Taiwan's development has been dominated by the statist perspective that identifies state power as a key to its growth miracle. The paper challenges this statist idea. By analyzing the evolving process of the developmental state from a predatory government in the 1950s and early 1960s, we argue that the imposing of constraints on the despotic power of the state constitutes a key mechanism by which a balanced power structure b…
Pathways to Crisis: Structural Liability, Global Contingency, and State-Business Relationships in the East Asian Economic Turmoil
Comparative Sociology is an international scholarly journal, published in six issues per year, dedicated to advancing comparative sociological analyses of societies and cultures, institutions and organizations, groups and collectivities, networks and interactions. All submissions for articles are peer-reviewed double-blind. The journal publishes book reviews and theoretical presentations, conceptual analyses and empirical findings at all levels o…
Pathways to Crisis: Structural Liability, Global Contingency, and State-Business Relationships in the East Asian Economic Turmoil
The financial crisis of 1997 in East Asia evoked extensive academic discussion and re-interpretation of the region’s economic growth strategy. In contrast to prevailing theorization through singling out certain principal elements for explanation, a theory of structural liability is proposed herein to examine both the structural liability of problematic economic institutions and the contingency of global contexts that instigated the crisis. This s…
Economic and Non-economic Determinants of Poverty in Developing Countries: Competing Theories and Empirical Evidence
This study conducts cross-national research on 97 developing countries to test competing hypotheses of poverty. Four major theories from the social sciences were examined, including (1) economic development and openness, (2) geographical and demographical disadvantages, (3) regime characteristics and war, and (4) social policy and human capital enhancement, to determine their explanatory power by modelling the ratio of the poor to total populatio…
Sociable resources and close relationships: Intimate relatives and friends in Taiwan
This study uses data from a national probability sample in Taiwan to investigate sociable resources' effect on the practices of close relationships with relatives and friends. Results indicate that status-based sociable resources (i.e., education, income and having a job) and assets-based sociable resources (i.e., length of residence and home ownership) facilitate close relationships. While the status-based resources tend to forge close relations…
Does Political Democracy Enhance Human Development in Developing Countries: A Cross-National Analysis
Despite the considerable progress of human development (HD) in developing countries (DCs) during recent decades, vast differences still remain among such countries. The question thus arises of why these divergences persist. This cross-national study uses a larger sample of DCs to offer necessary testing of the impact of democracy on HD. This study adopts new measures of democracy featuring majority rule and political contention to estimate their …
Macro-Structural Determinants of Political Freedom in Developing Countries: A Cross-National Analysis
Does globali zation affect human well-being
Socioeconomic Differentials in Global Exposure: A Research Note on Taiwan
Compiling several national survey data collected in Taiwan during 2000–2008, this study examines the differences in individuals' exposure to globalization. The authors conceptualize global exposure in terms of cross-border, transnational network relationships and consumption of global cultural products. The authors explore the effects of socioeconomic differences (education, occupational status, and income) on four dimensions of individual global…
Foreign Brides” Meet Ethnic Politics in Taiwan
A great number of women from China, Vietnam, and Indonesia recently arrived in Taiwan to marry men of lower social strata. Such an unusual pattern of migration has stimulated debates about the status and the citizenship of the new arrivals. This study analyzes Taiwanese responses toward these marriage migrants by using a national survey conducted in 2004. Three aspects of restrictive attitudes were tapped concerning these newcomers: (1) rights to…
If GDP is Not the Answer, What is the Question? The Juncture of Capabilities, Institutions and Measurement in the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report
Social Diversity, Institutions and Trust: A Cross-National Analysis
Narrating Neoliberal Transitions: Rhetoric of the State in South Africa and Taiwan
This paper investigates the rhetoric of the state in South Africa and Taiwan for installing neoliberal regimes. The ANC promotes a theory explaining why “tightening the belt” in the spirit of fiscal austerity is necessary for the post-apartheid economy. In Taiwan, the KMT state advances an argument that mobile capital free of border constraints promises favorable growth. The cognitive roadmaps the two states have crafted to influence people’s con…
Rekindling Comparative Development Research: Market Society, Gender and State Rhetoric
Critics of the prevailing global capitalism have exposed the fundamental weaknesses of this system as a plausible path for human progress. As neoliberal capitalism advances, the pressing issues in development studies extend beyond conventional considerations of the growth, distribution and equality of lower income countries. International organizations, including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, continue to…
Familial Reciprocity and Subjective Well-being in Ghana
The authors investigated variations in reciprocity and the impact of reciprocity on well-being in a West African society. They hypothesized that household size and income diversity encourage reciprocity, which in turn enhances subjective well-being. In empirical testing of these hypotheses the authors used the data of the Core Welfare Indicators Questionnaire of Ghana, a national sample of household heads (N males = 33,949, N females = 13,900) co…
Globally Happy: Individual Globalization, Expanded Capacities, and Subjective Wellbeing
The Effect of Global Exposure on Attitudes Toward Tradition, Patriotism, and Foreigners: Multilevel Analysis of 14 Asian Societies
In contemporary globalized world, exposure to ideas, people and goods from other countries increasingly feature daily lives. According to the globality theory, global experience and cross-border networking may influences one's value orientation in a way that an individual avoids seeing national tradition from a judgmental viewpoint but develop acceptant attitudes toward outsiders. The world society (WS) theory suggests educational socialization a…
Global Exposure and Openness: Comparative Analysis of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
This empirical study investigates the phenomenon of global mobility and networking at a quotidian level. A typology of global experience is constructed to characterize the qualitative distinctions among individuals' involvement in global flows. Derived from our understanding of individual border-crossing mobility and transnational relationships, we propose a system of four contrasts: the 'global exposed,' 'global surfer,' 'networked,' and the 'lo…
Introduction to the Symposium of Manufacturing (Un)Happiness in East Asia: Work, Employment and Well-Being
Beyond Economic Interests: Attitudes toward Foreign Workers in Australia, the United States and East Asian Countries
We compare attitudes toward foreign workers between two wealthy Western and four developing East Asian countries, using data from the 2006 and 2008 Asian Barometer surveys to test hypotheses on economic interests, cultural supremacy, and global exposure. Respondent majorities in all six countries expressed high levels of restrictivism. Regression model results indicate a consistent cultural superiority influence across the six countries, but only…
Is the Easy Life Always the Happiest? Examining the Association of Convenience and Well-Being in Taiwan
How Do Institutions Affect Happiness and Misery? A Tale of Two Tails
We generalize the discussion of the relevant determinants of happiness by asking the question if the same factors, more specifically the same institutional factors, affect happiness and misery. Focusing on five formal and informal factors and applying a combined approach to estimating happiness in four categories - misery, moderately dissatisfied, moderately satisfied, and happy - allows us to estimate if factors shift or skew the distribution of…
Economics (34 works) · Political science (29 works) · Sociology (27 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Demographic economics (17 works) · Geography (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Social Psychology (15 works) · Development economics (14 works) · Social Psychology (14 works)