Promotion of Political Popularity of People towards Politicians in Uthai Thani Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research article were 1) to study the general condition of promoting the political popularity of people towards politicians in Uthai Thani Province; 2) to study the factors promoting the political popularity of people towards politicians in Uthai Thani Province; and 3) to propose guidelines for promoting the political popularity of people towards politicians in Uthai Thani province. This was a mixed methods research. For qualitative research, in-depth interviews with 18 key informants and a focus group discussion of 12 persons were done. For quantitative research, a questionnaire with a confidence value of .959 was used with an accidental sampling of 400 people from a population of 329,942 people. The statistics used in this research was a multiple regression analysis. The results of the research revealed that 1) in terms of general conditions of political popularity, the politicians should have the following qualities: benefiting to society, having social status, training to educate people, having good habits, having knowledge and abilities, having experience and relationship with the network; 2) factors affecting political popularity from the 7 factors of political popularity were analyzed statistically. The variables that were positively correlated with five influencing factors were utilitarianism (x₁), social status (x₂), character traits (x₃), talent (x₄) and politician’s experience (x₅). They were the factors that determined the political popularity of people towards politician y; and 3) Sangahavatthu 4, namely Dana, Piyavaca, Atthacariya and Samanattata were applied to promote the political popularity towards politicians.