Attitude and Behavioral Control: Factors behind Popular Support to Duterte’s Drug War

Abstract

Surveys and polls in the Philippines reveal that there is wide support for President Duterte’s Drug War. This study investigates why Filipinos support President Duterte’s Drug War Strategy. This paper advances the Theory of Planned Behavior by testing the extent to which Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control affect the intention of a young Filipino to support the Drug War strategy. A self-reported questionnaire survey was conducted to 197 Filipinos enrolled in four universities in Cebu City, Philippines. Linear Regression analysis and Structural Equation Modelling were employed in analyzing the gathered data with the aid of SPSS and Smart PLS. The results of the study reveal that Attitude and Perceived Behavioral Control are the main factors behind the youth’s support to President Duterte’s Drug War. This implies that strategic intervention in transforming people’s attitudes and facilitating the ease in showing support to the activities linked to the drug war are key foci to sustain if not increase, people’s support to the drug war policy.

Determining the Motivations for Political Participation Among Elected Youth Leaders

“…However, youth's participation remains limited and in different areas of policy process. There's limited youth participation in War on Drugs-related processes (Mutiarin et. al, 2020) and there is limited youth participation in peace processes as well.…”

“…As (Wuttke, 2016) emphasized, there is a need to study psychological aspect in political engagements in the wake of the cognitive revolution in which the social sciences have gradually replaced 'needs' with 'goals' and 'expectancies' as prevailing motivational concepts. Exploration on intentions behind political support towards policies such as war on drugs (Mutiarin et al, 2020) heeds the call for psychological analysis in political science. In order to grasp the idea of what motivates people to engage in a particular activity, we turn to a theory of motivational studies and Psychology which was developed by (Richard M. Ryan and Edward L. Deci, 2000) known as the Self Determination Theory.…”

Filming Biblical Interpretations from the Ground: Anti-Empire Matthean Interpretations in Huwag Kang Papatay (2017) and the Philippine “Drug War”

“…The so-called "Drug War" killings posed a very contentious challenge to the Filipinos, including among the members of faith communities such as the Roman Catholic Church. Many openly or quietly endorsed Tokhang, following their strong support of Duterte and his framing of drug addiction through the lens of criminality and morality politics, while some openly and covertly resisted it, including the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church, on the grounds of compassion, understanding (See Cornelio and Medina 2019;Cornelio and Lasco 2020;Mutiarin et al 2020), human dignity and human rights (See Boehringer 2017;Conde 2020;Maboloc 2022). Huwag Kang Papatay is a documentary that demonstrates and articulates the need to question and to stop the EJKs based on the human dignity and human rights of the victims and the families they left behind, whose lives were dramatically changed by the trauma of the killing, and the larger, longer-lasting negative impact that also endangered the basic survival of their families.…”