Gated information and sentiments towards asylum seekers

This project uses text analysis, lab and survey experiments to examine how factual information on asylum seekers changes the public preferences of native citizens on policies towards asylum seeking and their related pro-social behavior. In doing so, the study reflects upon current theoretical arguments and inconsistent empirical findings concerning information processing. In our research, we specifically test whether factual information provision may ease or backfire unwelcoming attitudes towards asylum seeking policies along partisan lines in the UK. We further test whether factual information provision on asylum seekers improve or worsen pro-social behavior of native population through the moderation of partisanship. Our results from the lab experiment show that factual information provision by a neutral source could be an effective tool to communicate with native population in dealing with public biases, even though their preferred party has unfavorable views towards asylum seekers.

Papers

Does information matter? Asymmetric information and sentiments towards the policies on asylum seekers. Sonmez, B., Lo Iacono, S. (submitted to PLOS One)

Funding

Seedcorn Funding ESSEXLab; BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants