Are Risk-Taking Persons Less Religious? Risk Preference, Religious Affiliation, and Religious Participation in Taiwan

摘要

The "risk-preference" thesis is a controversial topic in the sociology of religion. Thus far, cross-cultural empiricalresearch on risk preference and religiosity has been meager. This study attempts to replicate Miller's (Miller, AlanS. 2000. Going to hell in Asia: The relationship between risk and religion in a cross cultural setting. Review ofReligious Research 42(1):5-18) study for Taiwanese society, using data from the 2007 Taiwan Social ChangeSurvey (TSCS). Logistic regression results show that for the Taiwanese (1) risk preference has little estimatednet effect on religious affiliation, but (2) the relationship between risk preference and frequency of religiousparticipation is statistically significant.