Acceptance or rejection of welfare migration—an experimental investigation

Jürgen Huber, Laura Hueber, Daniel Kleinlercher and Thomas Stöckl ()
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Jürgen Huber: University of Innsbruck
Laura Hueber: University of Innsbruck
Daniel Kleinlercher: University of Innsbruck
Thomas Stöckl: MCI The Entrepreneurial School

SN Business & Economics, 2022, vol. 2, issue 11, 1-28

Abstract: Abstract We study decisions on welcoming or opposing welfare migration in a laboratory setting with two societies in which one subject can migrate from the poorer to the richer society, provided a majority in the richer society votes to allow that. In each society, subjects indicate their preference for a percentage contribution to a public pool. The median of these rates sets the contributions paid by everybody; a feature that results in high contribution rates with an average of 90%. Varying the multiplier with which contributions are magnified before redistribution to society members, and thus the expected gain/loss associated with migration, we find that subjects overwhelmingly welcome migrants if they expect an economic benefit, while most participants oppose migration if they would be negatively affected by it. Regarding participants’ attitudes, we find that more altruistic people are more in favor of migration than more selfish people and that center right–wing oriented subjects propose lower contribution levels than center left–wing oriented subjects. We conclude that economic motives are a crucial factor for accepting or rejecting welfare migration. Therefore, a key to promoting acceptance of new migrants is to ensure and then communicate that their net effect on growth, society, and the public purse is positive.

Keywords: Migration; Public good game; Uniform contribution; Behavioral economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 C92 D72 F22 H41 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s43546-022-00356-6

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