Taipei City residents topped the “love to read” list in a recent survey of the nation’s 25 cities and counties.
A total of 55.8 percent of Taipei respondents said they loved to read, and read regularly or occasionally, according to the Global Views Survey Research Center.
Taichung City residents placed second at 52.7 percent, followed by Matsu residents at 52.4 percent, residents of Kaohsiung and Chiayi cities at 51.1 percent and Hsinchu City at 50.7 percent, the center said.
“These six cities are what I call ‘oases’ of the country. People living in these areas love reading,” said Charles Kao (高朝陽), founder and chairman of the Commonwealth Publishing Group.
The other 18 cities and counties are “deserts,” Kao said.
Hsinchu County is the only county in which the number of respondents who said they “like to read” was almost the same as those who said they “never read.”
“It is important for the government and private organizations to bridge the ‘reading divide,’” Kao said.
The survey also found that Taiwanese read slightly more than they did three years ago, with the average person devoting 26 minutes a day to reading, up from 23 minutes in 2007.
The survey found that 24.1 percent of respondents said they did not read, down from 25.4 percent in the previous survey, while 19.1 percent of respondents “rarely” read, much lower than the 25.5 percent in 2007, said Tai Li-an (戴立安), the research center’s director.
The survey also showed that the average person spends NT$1,461 a year on books.
“This is less than the price of a one-way high-speed rail ticket from Taipei to Kaohsiung,” Tai said.
Asked about the best policy to promote reading, 68.5 percent of respondents supported a tax deduction on reading materials, with only 23 percent disagreeing.
About a quarter of the respondents said they preferred e-books to printed editions, a large increase compared with the last survey.
The telephone survey was conducted between July 28 and Aug. 11, and involved 6,196 respondents aged over 18. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
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