Does Information Change Attitudes Towards Immigrants? Representative Evidence from Survey Experiments

60 Pages Posted: 25 Apr 2016 Last revised: 25 Jul 2018

See all articles by Alexis Grigorieff

Alexis Grigorieff

University of Oxford

Christopher Roth

University of Warwick, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Economics, Students

Diego Ubfal

World Bank

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: March 10, 2018

Abstract

We study whether providing information about immigrants affects people’s attitude towards them. First, we use a large representative cross-country experiment to show that, when people are told the share of immigrants in their country, they become less likely to state that there are too many of them. Then, we conduct two online experiments in the U.S., where we provide half of the participants with five statistics about immigration, before evaluating their attitude towards immigrants with self-reported and behavioral measures. This more comprehensive intervention improves people’s attitude towards existing immigrants, although it does not change people’s policy preferences regarding immigration. Republicans become more willing to increase legal immigration after receiving the information treatment. Finally, we also measure the same self-reported policy preferences, attitudes, and beliefs in a four-week follow-up, and we show that the treatment effects persist.

Keywords: Biased Beliefs, Survey Experiment, Immigration, Policy Preferences, Persistence

undefined

JEL Classification: C90, J15, Z1, Z13

Suggested Citation

Grigorieff, Alexis and Roth, Christopher and Ubfal, Diego, Does Information Change Attitudes Towards Immigrants? Representative Evidence from Survey Experiments (March 10, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2768187 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2768187

Alexis Grigorieff

University of Oxford ( email )

Mansfield Road
Oxford, Oxfordshire OX1 4AU
United Kingdom

Christopher Roth (Contact Author)

University of Warwick, Faculty of Social Studies, Department of Economics, Students ( email )

Coventry, CV4 7AL
United Kingdom

Diego Ubfal

World Bank ( email )

1818 H Street, NW
Washington, DC 20433
United States

0 References

    0 Citations

      Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

      Paper statistics

      Downloads
      1,548
      Abstract Views
      8,330
      Rank
      15,915
      PlumX Metrics
      Plum Print visual indicator of research metrics
      • Citations
        • Citation Indexes: 24
        • Policy Citations: 9
      • Usage
        • Abstract Views: 8293
        • Downloads: 1545
      • Captures
        • Readers: 60
      • Mentions
        • News Mentions: 2
      • Social Media
        • Shares, Likes & Comments: 2
      see details