Improving Intergroup Relations through Actual and Imagined Contact: Field Experiments with Malawian Shopkeepers and Chinese Migrants

Jun Gu, Annika Mueller, Ingrid Nielsen, Jason Shachat and Russell Smyth

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2019, vol. 68, issue 1, 273 - 303

Abstract: We examine the ability of intergroup contact to ameliorate intergroup relationships in an entrepreneurial and developing world context. We provide a decision model of how an entrepreneur chooses to invest time to extend their professional network. The model accommodates two distinct channels and generates alternative predictions based on which is activated by intergroup contact. One is the knowledge of the necessary time investment to forge a network connection with a member of another group, and the second is the preference-driven disutility of that time spent with that individual. We employ randomized experiments to test whether actual and imagined contact effectively reduces prejudice between indigenous Malawian shopkeepers and their Chinese migrant counterparts and test the stability of these changes over time. Actual contact produced differing results. Local Malawians’ attitude toward Chinese migrants did not improve, but their willingness to spend time with them did. In contrast, actual contact led to improvement in the Chinese migrants’ attitude toward local Malawians but did not increase their willingness to spend time with them. Imagined contact had no impact on Malawians’ attitude toward or willingness to spend time with Chinese migrants. These results are consistent with contact activating informational channels more so than preference ones.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/700569 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/700569 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/700569

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().