Sensitivity to Issue Framing on Trade Policy Preferences: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Abstract

We explore the impact of issue framing on individual attitudes toward international trade+ Based on a survey experiment fielded in Argentina during 2007, which reproduces the setup of earlier studies in the United States, we show that individuals' position in the economy and their material concerns define the strength of their prior beliefs about international trade, and thereby mitigate their sensitivity to the new dimensions introduced in informational cues+ Extending the analysis beyond the United States to a country with different skill endowments allows us to better explore the role of material and nonmaterial attributes on individual attitudes toward trade+ We find that skill is a central predictor of support for openness+ The effect is strongest for individuals in the service sector and in cities that cater to the producers of agricultural commodities+ Our findings suggest that the pattern of support for economic integration reflects the predictions from recent literature in international economics that emphasizes trade's impact on the relative demand for skilled labor regardless of factor endowments+ Our findings also amend recent empirical contributions that suggest socialization is the main factor explaining individual sensitivity to issue framing on trade preferences+ We suggest that material conditions associated with income and price effects are crucial, both in shaping trade preferences and in affecting the malleability of attitudes to issue framing+ Hence, our results provide a crucial contribution to our general understanding of the attributes shaping susceptibility to political framing in policy debates+ Recent empirical work on the determinants of trade policy preferences based on the United States reveals that individuals' responses to survey questions are susceptible to framing effects, the strength of which usually covaries with respon-

Default Positions: What Shapes Public Attitudes about International Debt Disputes?

“…Mansfield and Mutz (2013), for example, show that describing international trade as "outsourcing" significantly reduced Americans' support for this policy. On the other hand, other studies of individual attitudes toward international economic issues find little evidence that different issue frames move opinions (Ardanaz, Murillo, and Pinto 2013;Bechtel, Hainmueller, and Margalit 2015).…”

Salvation by good works? Offshoring, corporate philanthropy, and public attitudes toward trade policy

“…This paper also contributes to the broader literature on priming effects in trade attitudes. We find that trade preferences are indeed highly malleable by context (Ardanez, Murilo, & Pinto, ; Guisinger, ; Hiscox, ; Margalit, ; Rho & Tomz, ). The subtlety of our contextual shift is especially close to and resonant with work by Naoi and Kume ( ).…”

“…American trade politics’ fixation on offshoring is likely consequential. In broad strokes, those likely consequences for trade attitudes are clear: Americans’ attitudes toward trade are highly sensitive to context (see, for example, Ardanez et al, ; Hiscox, ; Margalit, ; Rho & Tomz, ) and using offshoring to frame a national debate around trade is likely to reduce support for it.…”

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“…The author found that less educated people are more sensitive to framing effects, demonstrating again that these effects are not homogeneous and that it is always important to take into consideration heterogeneous effects across different subgroups of the population (Hiscox, 2006). In a related work, after replicating Hiscox's experimental survey in Argentina, Ardanaz, Murillo and Pinto (2013) found that individuals' material conditions factor into explaining both their perceptions on trade policy and, therefore, their sensitivity to framing effects.…”