Favourable outcomes, procedural fairness, and political support: results from a survey experiment

This study examines support for redistribution in the developed economy of Hong Kong from three theoretical perspectives: self-interest, ideology, and social affinity. The analysis uses a between-subjects randomized vignette experiment to explore the interplay between welfare and politics; in particular, it addresses whether people express opposition to a welfare policy to convey political discontent even if they otherwise support the policy. Drawing on a survey of university students (N = 1245), the study finds that self-interest and ideology, and specifically perceptions of social mobility and individual responsibility, are strong predictors of support for redistribution. The vignette experiment provides evidence that politics indeed spills over into support for welfare policies. Respondents expressed less support for public housing if cued that the policy was associated with the government and were already dissatisfied with political leadership. The findings have implications for research on political support for redistribution and welfare policies.

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Political Support in the Wake of Policy Controversies

10.1093/oso/9780198793717.003.0010 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Peter Esaiasson ◽

Mikael Gilljam ◽

Mikael Persson

Keyword(s):

Local Community ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Procedural Fairness ◽

Political Support ◽

Partial Recovery ◽

Political Events ◽

Vertical Division ◽

Over Time

This chapter tests to what extent variation in political support over time is influenced by political events. Analyzing an event within the realm of “normal politics,” i.e. a policy decision in a local community to close down schools in an affluent Swedish municipality, the authors study changes in political support among affected citizens and non-affected citizens before decision, after decision, and after implementation. They identify four mechanisms that cause citizens to maintain political support even when faced with a policy decision that affects them negatively: procedural fairness, compromise decisions, fading memories, and constitutional arrangements for vertical division of power. The chapter explores to what extent each of these mechanisms mediates the effect of a policy decision on political support, and find that the partial recovery of political support among negatively affected citizens was mainly driven by compromise decisions and procedural fairness.

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Do African Voters Favor Coethnics? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Benin

Journal of Experimental Political Science ◽

10.1017/xps.2014.26 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-11 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

Claire L. Adida

Keyword(s):

Ethnic Groups ◽

Experimental Test ◽

Real World ◽

Political Support ◽

Independent Effect ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Political Actor ◽

Ethnic Cues ◽

Mixed Ethnicity

AbstractCan African politicians play the ethnic card? Ethnicity matters for a host of outcomes in Africa, but debate remains about the extent to which it motivates the African voter. In experimental settings, we know that ethnicity shapes political support for hypothetical candidates. This paper offers an experimental test of the extent to which ethnicity shapes political support for actual, real-world politicians. Relying on Benin’s mixed-ethnicity President, this paper proposes a survey experiment that measures the independent effect of coethnic cues in boosting support across both coethnic groups. The results reveal that coethnic cues work: the same political actor can draw support from two different ethnic groups based solely on subtle ethnic cues.

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Information from Abroad: Foreign Media, Selective Exposure and Political Support in China

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123416000739 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 611-636 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Haifeng Huang ◽

Yao-Yuan Yeh

Keyword(s):

Selective Exposure ◽

Political Support ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Regime Stability ◽

Internet Users ◽

Foreign Countries ◽

New Variant ◽

Foreign Media ◽

Free Media ◽

Preference Trial

What kind of content do citizens in a developing and authoritarian country like to acquire from Western free media? What are the effects of their potentially selective exposure? In a survey experiment involving 1,200 Chinese internet users from diverse socio-demographic backgrounds, this study finds that Chinese citizens with higher pro-Western orientations and lower regime evaluations are more inclined to read content that is positive about foreign countries or negative about China. More importantly, reading relatively positive foreign media content about foreign countries can improve rather than worsen the domestic evaluations of citizens who self-select such content. The article argues that this is because reputable Western media outlets’ reports are generally more realistic than overly rosy information about foreign socio-economic conditions that popularly circulates in China. Consequently, foreign media may have a corrective function and enhance regime stability in an authoritarian country by making regime critics less critical. The article also introduces a new variant of the patient preference trial design that integrates self-selection and random assignment of treatments in a way that is useful for studying information effects.

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Economic Outcomes, Quality of Governance, and Satisfaction with Democracy

10.1093/oso/9780198793717.003.0009 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Pedro C. Magalhães

Keyword(s):

Economic Performance ◽

Procedural Fairness ◽

Political Support ◽

Economic Outcomes ◽

Short Term ◽

Satisfaction With Democracy ◽

Outcome Favorability ◽

Quality Of Governance ◽

The Impact

This chapter investigates the impact of economic outcomes and quality of government on political support, arguing that the effect of economic performance is contingent on the quality of government. This hypothesis is derived from procedural fairness theories in organizational psychology according to which procedural fairness moderates the effects of outcome favorability on support for authorities. The chapter develops and tests the hypotheses that citizens’ political support is most affected by economic outcomes in those countries where the quality of government is lowest. In contrast, in contexts of high quality of government, political support is expected to be less sensitive to short-term economic fluctuations. Using ESS data and aggregate indicators of economic performance, the chapter finds that in countries where the quality of government is high, the impact of economic indicators is marginal, but where the quality of government is low, political support is quite sensitive to economic outcomes.

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Procedural Fairness and the Legitimacy of Agency Rulemaking

Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory ◽

10.1093/jopart/muz017 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 30 (3) ◽

pp. 400-414 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Alexander I Ruder ◽

Neal D Woods

Keyword(s):

Citizen Participation ◽

Procedural Fairness ◽

Government Agencies ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Perceived Fairness ◽

Context Dependent ◽

Agency Rulemaking ◽

The Relationship

Abstract We examine the relationship between procedural fairness and the legitimacy of rulemaking decisions made by government agencies. Evidence from a survey experiment indicates that the perceived fairness of the rulemaking process is closely tied to procedures designed to make it more transparent and to encourage greater citizen participation. However, our findings do not indicate that fair procedures bestow unconditional legitimacy on agency rulemaking actions. Rather, they suggest that the effect of procedural fairness is context-dependent and complex, with legitimacy perceptions varying across policy domains and being driven by the institutional avoidance of procedural controls rather than the procedures themselves. Thus, there may be significant limitations on the ability of fair procedures to impart legitimacy to bureaucratic policymaking.

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Interculturalism and the Acceptance of Minority Groups

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000404 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 51 (2) ◽

pp. 135-140 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Maykel Verkuyten ◽

Kumar Yogeeswaran

Keyword(s):

Minority Groups ◽

Psychological Research ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Social Psychological ◽

Negative Attitudes ◽

Positive Attitudes ◽

Social Psychological Research ◽

Using Data ◽

The Impact ◽

Situational Effect

Abstract. Multiculturalism has been criticized and rejected by an increasing number of politicians, and social psychological research has shown that it can lead to outgroup stereotyping, essentialist thinking, and negative attitudes. Interculturalism has been proposed as an alternative diversity ideology, but there is almost no systematic empirical evidence about the impact of interculturalism on the acceptance of migrants and minority groups. Using data from a survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands, we examined the situational effect of promoting interculturalism on acceptance. The results show that for liberals, but not for conservatives, interculturalism leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and increased willingness to engage in contact, relative to multiculturalism.

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What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽

10.1027/1614-2241/a000161 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 15 (1) ◽

pp. 19-30 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Knut Petzold ◽

Tobias Wolbring

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Behavioral Intentions ◽

Actual Behavior ◽

Full Time ◽

Factorial Survey ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Intended Behavior ◽

The Social ◽

Survey Experiments ◽

High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

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