Updating the Social Norm: the Case of Hate Crime after the Brexit Referendum

Facundo Albornoz, Jake Bradley and Silvia Sonderegger
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Jake Bradley: University of Nottingham/IZA
Silvia Sonderegger: University of Nottingham

No 203, Working Papers from Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE)

Abstract: Within the context of the Brexit referendum, we show that changes in the perception of social norms impact behavior. The referendum revealed new information about views over immigrants at country level. This new information caused a shift in the social norm which made xenophobic expressions more acceptable. At the margin, some of these expressions involve hate crime. We argue that the post-referendum behavioral change increased in the level of surprise at the referendum result, and that observed geographical variations of the effect depend on underlying local views on immigrants. Survey data corroborate these uncovered facts and support our theoretical mechanism.

Keywords: social norm; social acceptability; xenophobia; value of information; social interactions; referendum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 91 pages
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-law, nep-soc and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aoz:wpaper:203

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