Political Behavior of Citizens under the Democratic Way in Nonthaburi Province

Abstract

The objectives of this research were 1) to study opinions towards political behavior; 2) to study factors affecting political behavior; and 3) to present guidelines for the development of political behavior of citizen according to a democratic way in Nonthaburi Province. This study was a mixed method research. Qualitative research was done by interviewing 18 key informants. In quantitative research, data were collected by using a questionnaire with a confidence value of .891 from a sample of 400 people who were the electorate in the Nonthaburi area of ​​992,850 people. The statistics used in the research were mean and standard deviation. The results of the research showed that 1) the political behavior of citizens in accordance with the democratic way in Nonthaburi Province, overall, was at a high level ( = 3.76). When considering the average from highest to lowest, it was found that regarding political participation, it was at a high level ( = 4.03); in terms of political observation, it was at a high level (= 3.99) and in case of the political partnership, it was at a moderate respectively; 2) factors in terms of election factors (X₁), political culture (X₂), political socialization (X₃), election (X₄) and political behavior according to Buddhadhamma affected the political behavior of citizens based on the democratic way (Y) at a statistically significant level of 0.002. All 5 factors could explain the variation of the political behavior of citizens according to the democratic way in Nonthaburi Province (Y) by 97.0 percent. The standardized regression coefficients (4, 3, 5, 1, 2) were 0.652, 0.479, 0.413, 0.313 and 0.309, respectively; and 3) the guidelines for the development of political behavior of citizens in the democratic way in Nonthaburi Province by promoting participation for political communication to Increase learning, create political roles for people.