Taiwanese Buddhism and Environmentalism

Buddhism is often said to be an environment-friendly religion, but this thesis is rarely investigated. In this paper, we employ a mixed-method approach to examine this thesis in the case of Taiwan. We use data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey ( tscs ) and apply qualitative content analysis to examine practices among major Taiwanese Buddhist organizations. The findings suggest: (1) Buddhists in Taiwan engage significantly more in environment-friendly behavior than other religious members, and (2) members of different Buddhist organizations display similar levels of engagement in environment-related behavior. However, (3) Buddhist organizations engage very differently in environment-related activities. (4) Buddhist organizations engage more in nonpolitical environmental activities than they do in politically sensitive ones, and (5) among the four major Buddhist organizations, female-led Buddhist organizations show a higher level of environment-related practices than male-led organizations.