Public service motivation and pre-entry career perceptions among Taiwanese college students

Abstract This study examines the antecedents of public service motivation (PSM) among Taiwanese college students who have considered applying for public office through Taiwan’s examination-based civil service system. Drawing on PSM theory and research on pre-entry public career motivation, the study analyzes data from the 2023 Taiwan Government Bureaucrat Survey (TGBS) to investigate how perceived career attractiveness of public office, innovation potential, and political perceptions are associated with students’ PSM. Using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling, the study models PSM as a multidimensional construct comprising public interest, compassion, and self-sacrifice, and examines its relationship with three contextually grounded antecedents: perceived public office incentives, innovation potential, and political perceptions. The results show that all three antecedent domains are positively associated with PSM, with perceived career attractiveness of public office also positively related to innovation potential and political perceptions. These findings suggest that PSM among potential public-sector entrants is shaped not only by value-oriented motives but also by students’ perceptions of institutional legitimacy, career fit, and their own action-oriented capacities. Rather than explaining general willingness to enter civil service among all college students, the study focuses on motivational variation within a pre-entry group already open to public careers. Willingness to hold public office is therefore treated only as an exploratory descriptive outcome, not as the principal dependent variable in the structural model. By clarifying the antecedents of PSM in Taiwan’s institutional context, the study contributes to scholarship on PSM contextualization and offers evidence relevant to public-sector recruitment and talent development in East Asian democracies.