PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to test the theoretical predictions of the social capital investment model and examine the relationships between different forms of social capital and subjective happiness in Taiwan.Design/methodology/approachThis paper uses the data from the Survey of Social Development Trends in Taiwan 2003 for empirical investigations with ordinary least squares and ordered probit estimations.FindingsThe findings are mostly consistent with the characteristics implied by the social capital investment model. Moreover, to some extent, the individual impacts of different measures of social capital – including contributions to non‐profit organizations, volunteering, social and community involvement, and trust – on subjective happiness are identified.Practical implicationsThe results from this paper provide valuable policy implications for researchers and policymakers who are concerned about the impacts of changes of social structures and political institutions on people's well‐being during democratic developments.Originality/valueStudies on the relationship between social capital and subjective happiness for the new democratic Asian societies have received much less attention. Since the late 1980s, Taiwan has experienced a political transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime along with rapid economic development and further opening of society toward different individual beliefs, cultures, and global views. During this process, there have been various changes in the socio‐cultural context of society that is critical for the formation of social capital. This paper is considered as one of very few studies on the linkage between social capital and subjective happiness for a new democratic society.

Religious giving has been argued to be different compared to non-religious giving, because it influences after-life consumption while contributions to non-religious organizations are irrelevant to after-life consumption. The study herein examines this theoretical argument by investigating the relationships between age and religious and non-religious giving using the data of the Survey of Social Development Trends from Taiwan. From categorized contributions, this study estimates the effects of age, income, and price of giving on religious, charitable, academic, medical, and political contributions, as well as on the probability of providing volunteer work and the frequency of religious participation. The findings suggest that the positive relationships between age and the level of giving are stronger for religious and charitable giving while the positive effects of age on academic and medical giving are much weaker, and there is no significant relationship between age and political giving. That is, religious giving and charitable giving are closely related to after-life consumption, but the effects of age on academic giving and medical giving are considerably different. Moreover, older people are more likely to provide volunteer work and attend more religious activities than younger individuals. Contributions to religious and charitable groups are positively related to contributions to academic, medical, and political organizations.

In this paper, data from the 1999 Survey of Social Development Trend (SSDT) in Taiwan were used to examine the effects of income, tax price, as well as demographic variables on donations to different types of nonprofit organizations. The findings of this paper suggest that the effect of income on the level of donations was positively significant only for charitable and religious donations, but not for other types of donations. In addition, lowering the tax price of a donation exerted a significant effect on the probability of making donations only for religious contributions, but it also raised the level of contributions both for charitable and religious donations. The effects of most demographic variables were significant for the participation decision for all the different types of donations, but not significant for the levels of donations to academic, medical, and political organizations.

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This study investigates the role of religion in shaping the norms of citizenship from a cultural perspective for an East Asian country that exhibits fundamental differences in social contexts from Western advanced democracies. Using data drawn from the Taiwan Social Change Survey, we find that the Eastern religions of Buddhism, Taoism, and Folk Religions are important for explaining the formation of the concept of being a good citizen. This study further examines the relationships between citizenship norms and various conventional and unconventional types of political participation. The empirical results herein suggest that duty-based citizenship and engaged citizenship have significant differences in their effects on political participation.