When guidance changes: Government stances and public beliefs

Charlie Rafkin, Advik Shreekumar and Pierre-Luc Vautrey

Journal of Public Economics, 2021, vol. 196, issue C

Abstract: Governments often make early recommendations about issues that remain uncertain. Do governments’ early positions affect how much people believe the latest recommendations? We investigate this question using an incentivized online experiment with 1900 US respondents in early April 2020. We present all participants with the latest CDC projection about coronavirus death counts. We randomize exposure to information that highlights how President Trump previously downplayed the coronavirus threat. When the President’s inconsistency is salient, participants are less likely to revise their prior beliefs about death counts from the projection. They also report lower trust in the government. These results align with a simple model of signal extraction from government communication, and have implications for the design of changing guidelines in other settings.

Keywords: Government recommendations; Belief formation; Government credibility; Crisis management; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:196:y:2021:i:c:s0047272720301833

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104319

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