A Grounded Study on the Moral Motivation behind the Political Preferences of Selected Filipinos towards the War on Drugs

Abstract

The phenomenon of the War on Drugs, which aims to purposefully eradicate the activities involving illegal drugs, orchestrated by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte since June of 2016 had produced various opinions from the public. In this light, the study explored the political preferences of selected Filipinos towards the policies of the campaign through their moral motivations or the ability to morally decide on the rightness and wrongness of an event, decision, or process. Grounded theoretical approach of the qualitative paradigm was utilized to examine the verbal responses of twenty-two (N=22) selected individuals from Metro Manila, the region with the highest illegal drug-related cases. A series of coding and thematic analyses revealed that internal influences such as affection, religious beliefs, intentionalities, predicted behavioral response and prior knowledge about War on Drugs have an existing inter-dynamic relationship with the external influences of moral motivation such as physical environment and socioeconomic status. The formulated theory shows how these factors are morally deliberated to determine a political preference such as being pro-War on Drugs, anti-War on Drugs, or pro-War on Drugs with reservations. It is recommended, hence, that a wider scope consisting of other influences such as attitude be studied consisting of more controllable and quantifiable variables for future research.