Business Transactions with Chinese Tourists

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according to long-term predispositions and values about society and politics and the

similarity of symbols in policy issues and the long-term values determines the political action.

Short-term considerations do not play an important role in this view and “political and

personal lives exist largely isolated from one another” (Sears, Lau, Tyler & Allen 1980: 671).

In the context of the present study, it is important to address the role of the affective identity. As argued by Wu Naide and others, it might play a major role as an independent variable. While the economic incentives generated by the mainland Chinese tourists, might influence certain vendors attitudes positively, the affective identity dimension is believed to have a rather negative influence on public opinion toward the cross-Strait economic

integration for people holding a Taiwanese identity. The group, personal, and political identities of respondents might also have a large influence of their choice of attitudes.

The purpose of this study, however, is to address the short-term considerations of vendors and to analyze specifically the role of the Chinese tourists. Because it is the influence on short-term attitudes and opinions is important to us, the affective identity is designed to be a rather constant factor, which should not be affected by the everyday business transactions and remain largely unchanged. Because of the nature of affective

identity and its development being largely conducted during socialization and pre-adult years, we can assume that the identity of the vendors did not change significantly during the two to three year period, in which the main increase in Chinese tourists happened. This is not the case for the second and main independent variable of this study: the business transactions with Chinese tourists.

2.3 Business Transactions with Chinese Tourists

The main independent variable in this study will be the amount of business transactions of the different vendors with Chinese tourists. The measurement of this variable will provide the means to group the vendors into different “economic benefit groups” and to see if the amount of business transactions influences the views of the vendors in any way. According to many

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theorists and as we have seen before, the public opinion in Taiwan is believed to be

influenced mainly by the factors of affective identity and material incentives. The amount of business transaction or the economic benefit of the vendors is obviously very closely

connected to those material incentives. Every business transaction is a favorable event for the vendors, because they earn money of the Chinese tourists. Therefore, one might consider the business transactions and the material incentives as one and the same. However, in the present framework, this assumption falls short of another important factor.

When assessing the influence of economic incentives on the night market based on the business transactions with Chinese tourists, we would not only measure the economic incentives alone. Other than the pure economic business transaction, there is also a different factor, which will distinguish vendors with many Chinese customers from their counterparts.

They do not only get economic benefits, but by being involved in those business transactions with them, the vendors also might get exposed to the tourists more often than the vendors, who do not enjoy the same business with the mainlanders. Economic incentives and contact are highly correlated in this situation and are embedded in the whole process of the business transaction itself. While this process naturally incorporates some kind of contact as well as economic benefits, the concept of those two ideas is very different. While it is impossible to measure these two concepts separately in the current framework, it is still necessary to distinguish them conceptually, if we want to explore the influence of both factors alone.

Therefore the variable of business transactions with Chinese tourists has to rely upon two separate concepts, if we want to clarify the effect of those business transactions and shed light on the quality of the nature of those transactions. Starting with a conceptual assessment of the material incentives this chapter aims at clarifying this complicated relationship.

A key assumption in rational choice theory for political behavior is that individuals constantly try to maximize their self-interest. This also applies for political behavior and, therefore, predicts that people will act politically according to their own personal benefit and choose the actions, which provide the greatest personal benefit for them (Downs 1957). This argument has been very common ever since it gained popularity, but as some authors note, can also be found in as early works as those of Thomas Hobbes (Funk 2000; Mansbridge

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1990; Monroe 1991). For the research on public opinion, this question has also been a central one and the question whether people’s beliefs and behavior are guided by rational incentives and self-interest has been prominent in “virtually every Western moral philosophical and psychological theory” (Lau & Heldman 2009: 513; Sears & Funk 1991).

The definition of self-interest is a complicated one, but I would like to adopt the working definition of Sears & Funk as the “(1) short-to-medium term impact of an issue (or candidacy) on the (2) material well-being of the (3) individual’s own personal life (or that of his or her immediate family)” (Sears & Funk 1990: 247). This definition includes three basic psychological assumptions: “the idea of materialistic hedonism … the idea of egotism … and the idea of rationality” (Sears & Funk 1990: 247) and excludes other possible factors of self-interest like long-term considerations, non-material aspects of well-being and self-interests that affect well-being of the individual’s groups, but not the individual itself.

Rational incentives will be the first part of the main independent variable of this study.

Special regard will be directed toward the dimensions of past or retrospective considerations (i.e. experiences) and present or prospective rational incentives (i.e. future expectations). The distinction between retrospective and prospective considerations on the rational incentives is important because both differ in their purposes: Looking back retrospectively, “allows people to express their pleasure or dissatisfaction with what the government has done” and, thus, they are “potentially a means of holding the government accountable for economic

conditions” (Conover, Feldman & Knight 1987: 559). In contrast, prospective evaluations allow people to express their view about preferences for future economic development and, therefore, those are rather a “means of shaping economic policy” (Conover, Feldman &

Knight 1987: 559; Chappell & Keech 1985).

According to rational choice theory, vendors with more business transactions with Chinese tourists, therefore, should be influenced positively in his attitudes. The material incentives they get from this relationship should cause them to alter their attitudes and opinions. This is also the assumption, which has been used by Wu (2005) and many others in their assessment of the public opinion in Taiwan. Although the effect of the incentives is supposed to have a positive effect only, matters are very different for the other aspect of the

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business transaction. Contact, on the contrary to material incentives, might influence attitudes as well and can have a positive and/ or negative influence.

When we look at the work of Gordon Allport, who developed the “contact

hypothesis” we can find some explanations for this. In his “contact theory”, Allport proposed that prejudice reduction would occur when members of divergent groups met and developed relationships with members of the out-group (Allport 1954). Today many researchers have provided empirical research to support this core proposition in situations where four key conditions are present: equal group status within the situation; common goals; intergroup cooperation; and the support of authorities, law, or custom (Brown & Hewstone 2005;

Pettigrew 1998). Therefore, many researchers hold that by increased contact between two groups, the prejudices and attitudes toward the out-group will change to a more positive status.

But, as Pettigrew & Tropp (2006) show, the contact hypothesis can also have a negative impact. In fact, Paolini, Harwood & Rubin (2010) demonstrate that the negative effect of intergroup contact might even overshadow the positive effect. They predict that negative contact makes individuals more aware of their respective group memberships and confirm this prediction in two studies (Paolini, Harwood & Rubin 2010; Barlow et al 2012).

This theory does not exactly apply for the present study. Starting by the four core propositions of contact theory, we see that in the relationship between China and Taiwan, not all of those propositions apply. The conditions of an “equal group status within the situation”

and “support of authorities, law, or custom” are at least questionable. But for the “common goals” and the “intergroup cooperation” the matter is different and it is safe to say that there are considerable differences between both of the groups. This evokes problems with the framework of contact theory, especially as a positive force. Even more importantly, the contact theory also implies “contact” as its most important aspect. While there certainly exist business transactions between both of the sides, this is a very limited experience in terms of time period and quality and it is not sure if the term “contact”, like it is used in the above cited works, even applies to this kind of transactions and can be seen as a process of

“developing relationships” as Allport (1954) suggested. As there are many prejudices about

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Mainland Chinese people in Taiwan and the political situation – as well as the historical developments – have shaped the image of Chinese people significantly (for this also see:

Gries and Su 2013). The special situation between those two states and the very limited version of a “contact” speak against a useful effect of this theory in the present case.

However, we cannot completely disregard the possibility of the contact among vendors and tourists as being important in this framework. But since the theory as developed by Allport does not seem to apply to the present situation, I will consider a limited version of this concept, which is derived by Allport’s ideas and the possible influence to the positive and negative side on the attitudes of the vendors. To shed light on the issue and because of the difficulties of measuring contact and incentives separately, I will measure the business transactions of vendors as a whole and then make use of the qualitative set up of this study to look into the answers of vendors to try to differentiate between arguments, which do suggest a role of incentives, and arguments supporting the role of the contact.