Research Note: Partisan Priming and Subjective Evaluations of the Economy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Heath, Oliver; Smith, Patten; Gilby, Nicholas; Hoolahan, Finn

doi:10.1080/17457289.2015.1028412

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 27 publications

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“…The experiment focuses on manipulating the salience of respondents' economic perceptions, whereby salience denotes the prominence in respondents' minds of their economic perceptions. Such question-order survey experiments have recently been used by Heath, Smith, Gilby & Hoolahan (2015) to overcome a similar problem of endogeneity between subjective economic perceptions and partisanship. While experiments have been used in explaining various aspects of climate change attitudes 1 they remain underutilized.…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents

Kenny

2017

Climate Policy

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Existing analysis suggests that individuals may reduce their concern for and belief in climate change as a result of macro-economic difficulties. Such conclusions are predominantly based on repeated cross-sectional and pooled data making it difficult to separate out the effects of economic conditions from other explanatory factors. Approaching this question through experimentally priming individuals to feel a certain way about the economy has also proven difficult due to economic perceptions being difficult to alter in a survey setting (Kachi, Bernauer, & Gampfer, 2015). This paper thus investigates a related question on the effect of the salience of economic perceptions on climate change views using an online question-order experiment, whereby salience denotes the prominence of the issue in the mind of the respondent. Respondents were randomly assigned to receiving an economic prompting question before or after being asked about their climate change views. The results show no effect of the prompting on belief in anthropogenic climate change, but they do show an effect of prompting on prioritization of taking urgent action to address climate change. Those with a non-positive view of the economy were less likely to support urgent action in comparison to those who considered the economy to be performing well if they were asked first about their economic evaluations. The salience of economic evaluations and the direction of such evaluations would not be significant if economic evaluations themselves were not important, and thus the findings also reveal that economic evaluations do matter.

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Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents

Kenny

2017

Climate Policy

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No Evidence that Measuring Moderators Alters Treatment Effects

Sheagley

Clifford

2023

American J Political Sci

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Social scientists are frequently interested in who is most responsive to a treatment. By necessity, such moderation experiments often rely on observed moderators, such as partisan identity. These designs have led to an ongoing debate about where to measure moderators—immediately prior to the treatment, after the treatment, or in a prior wave of a panel survey. Measuring a moderator prior to the treatment is the most efficient and avoids posttreatment bias, but it raises concerns about priming. We contribute to this debate by systematically studying whether measuring moderators prior to an experiment affects the results. Across six different experiments, each involving a commonly used moderator, we find little evidence of priming effects, even when a moderator is placed immediately before the experiment. Our findings thus help resolve the debate, suggesting that researchers should measure moderators pretreatment. We conclude with advice on designing well‐powered moderation experiments.

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Research Note: Partisan Priming and Subjective Evaluations of the Economy: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Cited by 2 publications

References 27 publications

The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents

The role of economic perceptions in influencing views on climate change: an experimental analysis with British respondents

No Evidence that Measuring Moderators Alters Treatment Effects

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