Policy design and public support for carbon tax: Evidence from a 2018 US national online survey experiment

2020 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 905-921
Author(s):  
Nives Dolšak ◽  
Christopher Adolph ◽  
Aseem Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Online Survey ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Survey Experiment

scholarly journals Politics of Nostalgia and Populism: Evidence from Turkey

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Ezgi Elçi
Keyword(s):  
Direct Effect ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Positive Relationship ◽  
Satisfaction With Life ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Independent Variables ◽  
Party Preference ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract This article scrutinizes the relationship between collective nostalgia and populism. Different populist figures utilize nostalgia by referring to their country's ‘good old’ glorious days and exploiting resentment of the elites and establishment. Populists instrumentalize nostalgia in order to create their populist heartland, which is a retrospectively constructed utopia based on an abandoned but undead past. Using two original datasets from Turkey, this study first analyzes whether collective nostalgia characterizes populist attitudes of the electorate. The results illustrate that collective nostalgia has a significantly positive relationship with populist attitudes even after controlling for various independent variables, including religiosity, partisanship, satisfaction with life and Euroscepticism. Secondly, the study tests whether nostalgic messages affect populist attitudes using an online survey experiment. The results indicate that Ottoman nostalgia helps increase populist attitudes. Kemalist nostalgia, however, has a weak direct effect on populist attitudes that disappears after controlling for party preference.

scholarly journals Political ideology and vaccination willingness: implications for policy design

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Debus ◽  
Jale Tosun
Keyword(s):  
Side Effects ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Short Time Period ◽  
Successful Development ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Short Time

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has forced governments to impose major restrictions on individual freedom in order to stop the spread of the virus. With the successful development of a vaccine, these restrictions are likely to become obsolete—on the condition that people get vaccinated. However, parts of the population have reservations against vaccination. While this is not a recent phenomenon, it might prove a critical one in the context of current attempts to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. Consequently, the task of designing policies suitable for attaining high levels of vaccination deserves enhanced attention. In this study, we use data from the Eurobarometer survey fielded in March 2019. They show that 39% of Europeans consider vaccines to cause the diseases which they should protect against, that 50% believe vaccines have serious side effects, that 32% think that vaccines weaken the immune system, and that 10% do not believe vaccines are tested rigorously before authorization. We find that—even when controlling for important individual-level factors—ideological extremism on both ends of the spectrum explains skepticism of vaccination. We conclude that policymakers must either politicize the issue or form broad alliances among parties and societal groups in order to increase trust in and public support for the vaccines in general and for vaccines against COVID-19 in particular, since the latter were developed in a very short time period and resulted—in particular in case of the AstraZeneca vaccine—in reservations because of the effectiveness and side effects of the new vaccines.

scholarly journals Effective but fragile? Responses to repeated nudge-based messages for preventing the spread of COVID-19 infection

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shusaku Sasaki ◽  
Hirofumi Kurokawa ◽  
Fumio Ohtake
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Change ◽  
Infection Prevention ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Behavioral Changes ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
The Third ◽  
Compliance Level ◽  
Change Effect ◽  
Loss Frame ◽  
Over Time

AbstractNudge-based messages have been employed in various countries to encourage voluntary contact-avoidance and infection-prevention behaviors to control the spread of COVID-19. People have been repeatedly exposed to such messages; however, whether the messages keep exerting a significant impact over time remains unclear. From April to August 2020, we conducted a four-wave online survey experiment to examine how five types of nudge-based messages influence Japanese people’s self-reported preventive behaviors. In particular, we investigate how their behaviors are affected by repeated displays over time. The analysis with 4241 participants finds that only a gain-framed altruistic message, emphasizing their behavioral adherence would protect the lives of people close to them, reduces their frequency of going out and contacting others. We do not find similar behavioral changes in messages that contain an altruistic element but emphasize it in a loss-frame or describe their behavioral adherence as protecting both one’s own and others’ lives. Furthermore, the behavioral change effect of the gain-framed altruistic message disappears in the third and fourth waves, although its impact of reinforcing intentions remains. This message has even an adverse effect of worsening the compliance level of infection-prevention behaviors for the subgroup who went out less frequently before the experiment. The study’s results imply that when using nudge-based messages as a countermeasure for COVID-19, policymakers and practitioners need to carefully scrutinize the message elements and wording and examine to whom and how the messages should be delivered while considering their potential adverse and side effects.

scholarly journals Climate Change in Your Backyard: When Climate is Proximate, People Become Activists

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Sparks
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
The World ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
Climate Disasters ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Climate Mitigation Policies

Scientific warnings about climate change continue as climate disasters strike all around the world. There is increasing public support for climate mitigation policies, and major mass protests shed light on the issue. How does climate change impact increase climate activism? I build on a conventional understanding of activism by adding the insight of construal level theory. When climate change is experienced more directly, people are more likely to act because they care more and can link concern to specific actions. Among a sample of Californians (MTurk; n = 604) as climate was perceived as more proximate, respondents were more likely to take action. A survey-experiment conducted using a US sample (MTurk; n = 609) demonstrated that as issues become more psychologically proximate, respondents were more likely to take political action. These results suggest that organizers can activate proximity to mobilize supporters.

Status, Growth, and Perceptions of School Quality

2021 ◽  
pp. 016237372110305
Author(s):  
David M. Houston ◽  
Michael Henderson ◽  
Paul E. Peterson ◽  
Martin R. West
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
School Quality ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Accountability Systems ◽  
Local Schools ◽  
Achievement Growth ◽  
Status Information ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Perceptions Of School

States and districts are increasingly incorporating measures of achievement growth into their school accountability systems, but there is little research on how these changes affect the public’s perceptions of school quality. We conduct a nationally representative online survey experiment to identify the effects of providing participants with information about their local public schools’ average achievement status and/or average achievement growth. Prior to receiving any information, participants already possess a modest understanding of how their local schools perform in terms of status, but they are largely unaware of how these schools perform in terms of growth. Participants who live in higher status districts tend to grade their local schools more favorably. The provision of status information does not fundamentally change this relationship. The provision of growth information, however, alters Americans’ views about local educational performance. Once informed, participants’ evaluations of their local schools better reflect the variation in district growth.

scholarly journals Why Do Policymakers Support Administrative Burdens? The Roles of Deservingness, Political Ideology, and Personal Experience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Baekgaard ◽  
Donald P Moynihan ◽  
Mette Kjærgaard Thomsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Limited Evidence ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Local Politicians

Abstract Administrative burdens affect peoples’ experience of public administration but there is, to date, limited evidence to as why policymakers are willing to accept and impose burdens. To address this gap, we draw from the policy design and administrative burden literatures to develop the concept of burden tolerance—the willingness of policymakers and people more generally to passively allow or actively impose state actions that result in others experiencing administrative burdens. Drawing on a survey experiment and observational data with Danish local politicians in a social welfare setting, we find that more right-wing politicians are more tolerant of burdens, but politicians are less willing to impose burdens on a welfare claimant perceived as being more deserving. Politicians with a personal experience of receiving welfare benefits themselves are less tolerant of burdens, while information about the psychological costs experienced by claimants did not reduce burden tolerance.

Caught Between Volunteerism and Professionalism: Support by Nonprofit Leaders for the Donative Labor Hypothesis

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 327-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirae Kim ◽  
Étienne Charbonneau
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
Nonprofit Sector ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Executive Directors ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
Social Expectation ◽  
Nonprofit Leaders

The rise of professionalism within the nonprofit sector has transformed the sector’s reliance on well-meaning volunteers to paid professionals. While the professionalization of the nonprofit workforce is likely to continue, nonprofits are increasingly challenged for their inability to pay competitive wages. Our study argues that a social expectation for nonprofit employees to forgo some of their wages influences the donative labor narrative, which in turn impacts low nonprofit wages. We present data from an online survey experiment of executive directors at 467 nonprofits, along with their organizations’ Form 990 filings, to contrast socially biased attitudes and genuine views toward the donative labor hypothesis. The findings illustrate that the donative labor narrative should be understood as a result of social expectations for sacrifice of nonprofit employees, rather than a simple outcome of supply and demand in the labor market. We discuss the need to reframe the widespread donative labor narrative.

Asymmetric Accountability: An Experimental Investigation of Biases in Evaluations of Governments’ Election Pledges

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (13-14) ◽  
pp. 2207-2234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elin Naurin ◽  
Stuart Soroka ◽  
Niels Markwat
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Investigation ◽  
Political Behavior ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
The Cost

Governments often fulfill election pledges to remain in power; yet, it is unclear how pledge fulfillment and breakage actually affect public support for government. This article explores the tendency for governments to be penalized for unfulfilled pledges more than they are rewarded for fulfilled pledges. In two large-scale highly realistic online survey experiments ( N = 13,000, 10,000), performed at the beginning and middle of a government’s term in office, respondents are presented with a range of (real) election pledges. We find that broken pledges often are more important to government evaluations than fulfilled pledges, and that pledge fulfillment can produce decreases in support from nonsupporters that more than offset the marginal gains among supporters. Findings provide valuable evidence on asymmetries in political behavior, and a unique account of the “cost of ruling,” the seemingly inevitable tendency for governments to lose support during their time in office.

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