An Empirical Study on the Job Satisfaction of Chinese Fishery Seafarers in the Penghu Islands

Abstract

The Penghu Islands are part of Taiwan’s territory with varied international fishery cargo boat seafarers including Chinese seafarers. Empirical surveys on Chinese fishery seafarers and local fish cargo boats’ owners are implemented and an Importance-Performance Grid model is employed to explore both parties’ perceptions differences on the importance and performance of fourteen job satisfaction attributes for these Chinese seafarers. Looking into the “possible overkill attribute”, Chinese seafarers consider “Ease of Hiring Chinese seafarers procedure in Taiwan” as less important attributes with higher degree of performance. In contrast with the Chinese seafarers, local ship owners perceive “Coast Guard Agency’s (CGA’s) Reschedule roster time”, “Job Security”, and “Discrimination between Chinese and foreign fishermen” as the three “possible overkill attributes”. Thus it could be concluded, when “critical attribute” and “possible overkill attribute” influencing seafarers’ job satisfaction are concerned, there are broad perception gaps between Penghu’s fish cargo boat owners and the Chinese seafarers.