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Numbers and attitudes towards welfare state generosity
journal contribution
posted on 2019-10-15, 08:25 authored by Carsten Jensen, Anthony KevinsAnthony KevinsBetween pro-retrenchment politicians and segments of the media, exaggerated claims about the generous benefits enjoyed by those on welfare are relatively common. But to what extent, and under what conditions, can they actually shape attitudes towards welfare? This study explores these questions via a survey experiment conducted in the UK, examining: (1) the extent to which the value of the claimed figure matters; (2) if the presence of anchoring information about minimum wage income has an impact; and (3) whether these effects differ based on egalitarianism and political knowledge. Results suggest that increasing the size of the claimed figure decreases support in a broadly linear fashion, with anchoring information important only when (asserted) benefit levels are modestly above the minimum wage income. Egalitarianism, in turn, primarily matters when especially low figures are placed alongside information about minimum wage, while low-knowledge respondents were more susceptible to anchoring effects than high-knowledge ones.
Funding
Department of Political Science at Aarhus University
Independent Research Fund Denmark (4003-00013)
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (750556)
History
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Political StudiesVolume
67Issue
2Pages
496 - 516Publisher
SAGE PublicationsVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This is an Open Access article. It is published by SAGE Publications under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.Acceptance date
2018-05-01Publication date
2018-06-08Copyright date
2018ISSN
0032-3217eISSN
1467-9248Publisher version
Language
- en
Depositor
Dr Anthony KevinsUsage metrics
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