Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/161042 
Year of Publication: 
2016
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 10419
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
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.
Subjects: 
attitudes towards immigrants
biased beliefs
survey experiment
immigration
policy preferences
persistence
JEL: 
C9
J15
Z1
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
606.7 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.