Between Fear Mongers and Samaritans: Does Information Provision Affect Attitudes towards the Right of Asylum in Germany?

Bernd Hayo and Florian Neumeier ()

MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: We utilise data from a self-designed survey that includes information experiments to elicit the German public’s attitude towards the right of asylum. The survey was carried out in 2018. We randomly assign 2,048 interviewees to different groups and ‘treat’ each group with different information about the asylum-seekers that came to Germany in 2015 and 2016. Treatments involve information about (i) the total number of asylum-seekers, (ii) the fiscal costs and (iii) potential long-term benefits associated with accepting refugees, (iv) the share of Muslim asylum-seekers, and (v) the share of war refugees. Providing information about the fiscal costs associated with accepting refugees, and, to a lesser extent, about the share of Muslim refugees, significantly increases the likelihood of opposing the right of asylum. These effects are more pronounced for middle-income earners, respondents with a low level of education, and female respondents. Deviations of people’s beliefs from the actual numbers can affect their attitudes: respondents who underestimated the share of Muslim refugees are more likely to call for abolishing the right of asylum.

Keywords: Refugee crisis; right of asylum; immigration; perception bias; survey experiment; Germany. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 J15 K37 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Forthcoming in

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.uni-marburg.de/en/fb02/research-groups ... ers/31-2020_hayo.pdf First 202031 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Between fearmongers and Samaritans: Does information provision affect attitudes towards the right of asylum in Germany? (2023)
Working Paper: Between Fear Mongers and Samaritans: Does Information Provision Affect Attitudes towards the Right of Asylum in Germany? (2020)
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:mar:magkse:202031

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bernd Hayo ().