The Linkage Between Issue Ownership Perception and Campaign Advertising: A Case Study of the 2012 Taiwan Presidential Election

Abstract

Assuming that a political party has a strong incentive to gain votes via issue setting as part of its campaign strategy, this study utilized a Web experimental survey to explore the extent to which three issue-related campaign advertising strategies—namely, issue ownership, issue convergence, and issue trespassing—affected voters’ perceptions toward parties’ issue-handling capabilities. Our empirical results show that issue ownership perceptions exist in Taiwan. In the 2012 Taiwan presidential election, as issue ownership advertisements may reinforce voters’ beliefs regarding parties’ issue-handling capabilities, issue trespassing advertising may improve a party’s image on the disadvantageous issue dimension. At least our data shows that the Kuomintang’s (KMT) advertisements have both effects.