1.1 Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) at the Turn of the Century.
The public service broadcasting in most western European countries is in a state of flux, if not in any crisis (Brants, 2003; Collins, et al. 2001). The convergence of broadcasting and telecommunication, the switch from analogue to digital
communication, and the changes associated with globalization and privatization —all leads it more difficult to define the concept of public service (Bardoel & D’Hanenes, 2004; Collins, et al. 2001; Brown, 1996b). In addition to the challenges caused by material forces, PSB is also challenged on the ideological ground, say, a shift in mentality from liberalization/ democratization to postmodern/ neoliberal sentiments that may have profound implications for the type of cultural policy regulation of which PSB is a part (Syvertsen, 2003). Both the material and nonmaterial forces cause the legitimacy of PSB being challenged and undermined and consequently made public financing for PSB become stagnated, and altered the context to which broadcasters and policy makers must respond (Croteau & Hoynes, 2001).
However, the development of public service broadcasting in Taiwan is opposite to that of the Europe. After passing the Amendment of Broadcasting & Television Act in 2003 in which the government, military, and political party were required to
withdraw from the terrestrial television, the idea of launching a larger scale of public service broadcasting in Taiwan emerged (Cheng, 2005). On July 1st 2006, Taiwan Broadcasting System (TBS 台灣公共廣播電視集團) is established by the merge of Public Television Service Foundation (PTS) and Chinese Television System (CTS), which is government-owned in the previous 35 years. Furthermore, Hakka TV, Indigenous TV and Taiwan Macroview TV also joined TBS in the beginning of 2007.
It seems to be a satisfying result to counterbalance and to fight against the over market-oriented media environment in Taiwan. However, it also confronted with the embarrassment of lacking substantial and stable public investment fund that can promise the practice of public value without the intervention of commercial and political force.
As far as the fund is concerned, there never come out an agreement about how much a reasonable public funding should be, and the funding mechanism still leaves room for debate. To what extant should the government budget for the public
broadcasting every year, or to say, how much should the public fund to invest in public broadcasting, still remains a significant media policy controversy. It is also suggested that TBS should collect the so called “license fee” rather than rely on the annual budget from the government, just like what BBC and NHK have done for decades. By the collection of license fee, the civil right can be protected and the production of high quality program can be ensured. However, since the audiences in Taiwan have got used to the free access to terrestrial public broadcasting, having the audiences to pay for the public broadcasting service would undoubtedly a failure-- unless the audience can perceive the concrete value of and can state their preference to public service broadcasting.
Although the benefits to which PTS was designated to accomplish are clearly stated (PTS, 2007a; Harrison & Woods, 2001; Coppens, 2002), yet empirical evidence of the claimed benefits is seldom pursued in the literature so far. The lack of
quantification is due to the inherent difficulties of valuing the non-traded good. To estimate the value of PTS, or to say, the benefit that the citizen perceived, this research conducts the Contingent Valuation Methodology (CVM) and elicits the citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for PTS.
1.2 Purpose of the Study
To understand whether people hold positive values for public service
broadcasting which have limited apparent personal economic relevance, this study employ the reveled-preference technique (e.g. CVM) eliciting the participants’
willingness to pay (WTP) for public service broadcasting to estimate the value of PTS.
This study discusses only the value of PTS instead of the TBS as a whole because the TBS has been established simply for one year and is still not very well recognized by Taiwan citizens. In this research, the terms “PSB” and “PTS” must be clearly defined that “PSB” is a conceptual term and “PTS” (the abbreviation of 「公共電視台」) is the practice of PSB in Taiwan and is the operational definition of PSB in this study.
Actually, the implication of WTP is two-fold: to the audience, the WTP can be the seen as the benefit that they derived from program receiving; to the broadcasters, WTP can be regarded as the value generated from program production. As a result, WTP can be further used in other analyses. Take Japan’s studies for example,
researchers use the result of audiences’ WTP for TV watching to conduct the
cost-benefit analysis for broadcasting industry (Hisao et al, 1993). A recent case can be found in NHK. In the evaluation of NHK’s achievement of their promises, the amount of NHK audiences’ WTP serves not only an indication of audiences’
evaluation, but serves as the numerator considering their Value for Money (VFM) as well. (see NHK“約束”評価委員会，2007).
It has been 9 years since PTS, Taiwan’s first public service broadcasting institution, introduced its public service. Although the contribution of PTS is
“invaluable” to the civil society, this study is intended to have it “valuable” to see if people hold positive value toward the service. Owing to the fact that it is the
commercial broadcasting that dominant the media market and PTS is strongly threatened by the commercial counterparts, people’s attitude toward commercial broadcasting seems to be a potential determinant for interpreting value of PTS. In brief, the purpose of the study is:
(1) to estimate the use and nonuse value of public service broadcasting in monetary term by eliciting Taiwan citizen’s willingness to pay.
In addition to the estimation of WTP, other purposes of this study are to:
(2) to find out what kind of public service broadcasting functions that citizens emphasize, and see whether their expectation of PTS and satisfaction with commercial broadcasters influence their WTP; and
(3) to examine the influences of citizen’s socio-economic characters, media usage behavior and attitudes, and see to what extent these variables may affect their WTP.
1.3 Research Methods and Data Sources
To answer the research questions, a national wide telephone survey is conducted by Research center for Survey Research, Academia Sinica in December 2007.
Respondents’ socioeconomic characteristics, attitudes and opinions are collected to get a holistic view on how people perceive PTS in Taiwan. To know how these characteristics influence their willingness to pay for PSB, probit regression model is used as an analytical tool to examine the influence of these determinants. Finally,
individual’s willingness to pay for PSB is estimated with the empirical model which is developed under the notion of welfare measures proposed by Hanamann (1984).
1.4 Structure of Research
This study proceeds with a discussion of the relevant literatures on media accountability and on contingent valuation methodology in Chapter 2. After the literature, the survey procedures are explained in Chapter 3, the results of the survey are described in Chapter 4, and the empirical model is presented in Chapter 5. Finally Chapter 6 concludes with the discussion of the main findings.