When a Taoist Temple Serves as a Seller and Believer Becomes a Buyer

Abstract

Temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues, provide places for people to worship. However, the high degree homogeneity in Taoism has led many temples to separate from community-based patterns to expand their follower base and donations by increasing the range of religious services. Lamp lighting is the most common service provided by ordinary Taoist temples in Taiwan. In numerous famous temples, crowds waiting in line to register for lamp lighting year after year. To understand the attitudes of worshippers toward the lamp stand decoration project for adding lamp items at a Taoist temple, this survey issued 1,200 questionnaires and obtained 960 in 2013, following exclusion of invalid questionnaires (the response rate was approximately 80 %). The questionnaire construction fully met internal consistency for each survey item as well as reliability and validity below the normal value (Cronbach’s a value = 0.7).