Tackling misperceptions about immigrants with fact-checking interventions: A randomized survey experiment
We conduct a randomized online survey experiment to study the impact of fact-checking offers and financial incentives on misperceptions about immigrants. We find that natives overestimate the number of immigrants and the social and economic costs of immigration. Offering a free check of the factual...
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | text |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
2023
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2690 https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soe_research/article/3689/viewcontent/Immigration_and_misperception_av.pdf |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| Institution: | Singapore Management University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | We conduct a randomized online survey experiment to study the impact of fact-checking offers and financial incentives on misperceptions about immigrants. We find that natives overestimate the number of immigrants and the social and economic costs of immigration. Offering a free check of the factual information about immigrants reduces these misperceptions; it becomes more effective when combined with financial incentives. However, more than half of the participants never took up offers to check factual information. Using a model of information search with limited attention, we identify the presence of non-negligible costs of information search and processing, which limits the effectiveness of the fact-checking interventions. Finally, we find that the fact-checking interventions moderately improve natives' attitudes toward immigrants but affect neither their policy preferences nor giving behavior toward immigrants. |
|---|