Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election

Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election

This study aimed to identify the factors influencing South Korean voters’ attitudes towards increasing public expenditure on health and to identify whether the issue of healthcare expenditure influenced candidate choice in the 2012 Korean presidential election. The study used the data from a survey...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Eun, Sang Jun, Lee, Jin Yong, Jung, Hye-Min, Lee, Jin-Seok
Format: Online
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science 2016
Online Access:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5053430/
id pubmed-5053430
recordtype oai_dc
spelling pubmed-50534302016-10-27 Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election Eun, Sang Jun Lee, Jin Yong Jung, Hye-Min Lee, Jin-Seok Research Article This study aimed to identify the factors influencing South Korean voters’ attitudes towards increasing public expenditure on health and to identify whether the issue of healthcare expenditure influenced candidate choice in the 2012 Korean presidential election. The study used the data from a survey conducted by the Institute of Korean Politics at Seoul National University immediately following the 2012 presidential election. The survey was completed by a nationwide sample of 1,200 people aged 19 or over using a face-to-face interview method and proportional quota sampling based on sex, age, and region. About 44.3% of respondents had a positive attitude toward increasing public health expenditure. There was no significant difference by the candidate they supported (conservative Park Geun-hye or liberal Moon Jae-in). In particular, even 44.9% of conservative supporters agreed with more spending. Politically neutral respondents (OR = 1.76, 90% CI 1.22–2.54) and strong conservative party supporters (OR = 1.53, 90% CI 1.05–2.25) were more likely to support public health expenditure increase compared to strong liberal party supporters. Also, respondents who believed that the economic gap in the country was widening were 1.91 times more likely to support an increase in public health expenditures. However, the issue of health expenditure had no influence on voters’ choice of presidential candidates, and in particular no negative effect of choice of the ruling (conservative) party’s candidate. Our results should be interpreted with care; one possible reason for this lack of effect might be that constituents voted along partisan lines regardless of their attitude to the welfare issue; another possible explanation might be the success of the “left click strategy” of the conservative party. That is, the conservatives did not reject economic democratization or social welfare expansion. Further research should be done to explain why attitudes to health spending did not directly affect choice of candidate. Public Library of Science 2016-10-06 /pmc/articles/PMC5053430/ /pubmed/27711213 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163763 Text en © 2016 Eun et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
repository_type Open Access Journal
institution_category Foreign Institution
institution US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building NCBI PubMed
collection Online Access
language English
format Online
author Eun, Sang Jun
Lee, Jin Yong
Jung, Hye-Min
Lee, Jin-Seok
spellingShingle Eun, Sang Jun
Lee, Jin Yong
Jung, Hye-Min
Lee, Jin-Seok
Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election
author_facet Eun, Sang Jun
Lee, Jin Yong
Jung, Hye-Min
Lee, Jin-Seok
author_sort Eun, Sang Jun
title Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election
title_short Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election
title_full Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election
title_fullStr Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election
title_full_unstemmed Determinants of Attitude toward the Public Health Spending and Its Relationship with Voting Behavior in the 2012 South Korean Presidential Election
title_sort determinants of attitude toward the public health spending and its relationship with voting behavior in the 2012 south korean presidential election
description This study aimed to identify the factors influencing South Korean voters’ attitudes towards increasing public expenditure on health and to identify whether the issue of healthcare expenditure influenced candidate choice in the 2012 Korean presidential election. The study used the data from a survey conducted by the Institute of Korean Politics at Seoul National University immediately following the 2012 presidential election. The survey was completed by a nationwide sample of 1,200 people aged 19 or over using a face-to-face interview method and proportional quota sampling based on sex, age, and region. About 44.3% of respondents had a positive attitude toward increasing public health expenditure. There was no significant difference by the candidate they supported (conservative Park Geun-hye or liberal Moon Jae-in). In particular, even 44.9% of conservative supporters agreed with more spending. Politically neutral respondents (OR = 1.76, 90% CI 1.22–2.54) and strong conservative party supporters (OR = 1.53, 90% CI 1.05–2.25) were more likely to support public health expenditure increase compared to strong liberal party supporters. Also, respondents who believed that the economic gap in the country was widening were 1.91 times more likely to support an increase in public health expenditures. However, the issue of health expenditure had no influence on voters’ choice of presidential candidates, and in particular no negative effect of choice of the ruling (conservative) party’s candidate. Our results should be interpreted with care; one possible reason for this lack of effect might be that constituents voted along partisan lines regardless of their attitude to the welfare issue; another possible explanation might be the success of the “left click strategy” of the conservative party. That is, the conservatives did not reject economic democratization or social welfare expansion. Further research should be done to explain why attitudes to health spending did not directly affect choice of candidate.
publisher Public Library of Science
publishDate 2016
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5053430/
_version_ 1613675322254819328

Similar Items