| Approved on: | 2023-05-12 |
| Brief purpose of the study: | In this study, we suggest that different characteristics of immigrants could cause disparate effects on citizens’ welfare attitudes – the effects of immigration on welfare support may vary based on immigrants’ physiological features and national background that are linked to the deservingness evaluations. In particular, we argue that the more immigrant beneficiaries’ characteristics can arouse sympathy for their deservingness, the more likely natives are to support welfare programs that can benefit immigrants. Using a preregistered conjoint experiment on a representative sample of citizens in the United States, we expect that highlighting immigrant children and women rather than adult and male immigrants as welfare beneficiaries will positively affect welfare support. In addition, immigrants from relatively high-income countries and countries under invasion are more likely to increase welfare support than their counterparts from relatively low-income countries and countries with peace. Moreover, we anticipate that Republicans are more responsive to the favorable effects of such information than Democrats as Republicans could be more sensitive to the cues about the deservingness of immigrant beneficiaries than Democrats We also seek to advance the literature by studying under what contexts people support higher administrative burdens and increase program favorability. We hypothesize that support for administrative burden is context dependent and differs on how an individual construes the world using heuristics. To our knowledge, we are among the first to study the comparative effect of different contexts on support for administrative burden. Our study not only has practical implementations for public policy implementation, but also contributes to the academic literature by helping us better understand the underlying mechanism between administrative burden and program favorability. |
| Brief summary of what participants will be asked to do: | Respondents will be asked what they think of some current social welfare programs in the United States. |
| Basic eligibility criteria: | We will launch a project on Prolific and MTurk to recruit respondents. Respondents’ participation is completely voluntary and all individuals should be living in the United States who are 18 years of age or older.
Prolific is an online surveys site that primarily works with researchers looking to conduct academic surveys. The surveys posted to the site are unique in nature and pay generously compared to similar survey websites. People from over 30 countries are invited to join the website to take surveys offered by academics, startups, charities and businesses.
The MTurk Human Intelligent Task (HIT) description is effectively the recruitment plan for the study. The HIT description must include clear and accurate information about participation, such as compensation, duration, and the types of tasks Workers will be asked to do. In our study, participants must be adults located in the United States to be included in the study. We will also screen for past MTurk approval rate, starting with a minimum approval rate of 99% and reducing the minimum as necessary to recruit sufficient numbers of respondents. |
| Study contact for more information: | If respondents have questions about this study, they can contact the principal investigator: jbae@mail.missouri.edu, 573-890-0839, or hqk52@mail.missouri.edu, 573-639-1256. |
| IRB Number: | 2096741 MU |
