The Mediating Role of Perceived Threat in the Relationship between Casual Contact and Attitudes towards Syrian Refugees in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey hosts the largest Syrian refugee population in the world. As an attempt to understand antecedents of residents attitudes towards Syrian refugees, the present study aimed to investigate the relationships between contact experience, perception of threat, and the attitudes. Specifically, we hypothesized that perception of threat would mediate the relationship between contact experience and the attitudes. Frequency of different contact types, threats associated with economic, cultural, and criminal risks, and attitudes towards male or female targets based on preferred social distance were subjected to analyses in an adult sample of 170 women and 183 men. Results revealed a full mediation effect both for female and male Syrian refugee targets. We discussed the findings referring the observed nature of contact as mostly being casual, threat level being high, and attitudes being relatively negative within a specific media-effects framework.

What Makes Me Want You Here? Refugee Integration in a Zambian Settlement Setting

“…In accordance with scientific literature [40,42,53] and the conceptual framework, our probit model outcomes confirmed a strong relationship between public opinion and contact, revealing high significances and a notable correlation (0.193). According to Rayton [81], a bivariate probit model tests whether or not a model's fit improves through the joint analysis of two independent variables.…”

“…There are some aspects of integration that our paper did not address. This concerns media representations, which can affect host attitudes towards outsiders [30,40,46] and also the refugees themselves via language, skills, education, age, openness towards contact, and cultural adaptation [21,31,47]. It would also be interesting to include a trust indicator in such an integration analysis, given that European country studies show more positive attitudes towards immigration in societies with high levels of social trust see [29,43,79].…”

“…It proposes that prejudice and intergroup conflict emerge when members of a group feel danger from an outgroup [34,35]. The feeling may stem from diverse factors such as the relative size of the minority group [36,37], associations of violence and crime [31,38], concerns regarding security [39][40][41], a change of cultural values and norms [42,43], the spread of infectious diseases [44] and the risk of higher food insecurity [11,45]. Fears that immigrants will be an economic burden are also prevalent [7,11], with those perceiving higher threats reporting less support for the hosting of refugees [31,46].…”

“…Similarly, a study by Crawley et al [54] in a British context concluded that opportunities for meaningful social contact with immigrants are a key factor for the formation of a positive attitude. However, not only contact influences opinion; it can also be an interplay [40,42]. Generally, the literature suggest that contact theory works best when it applies to everyday activities [18].…”

“…This relates to natural resource spots, security issues, education participation/schools, joint employment, the health center and trade at the market. Similarly, Çirakoglu et al [40] assessed the level of contact in a host-refugee setting via a list of possible contact places. The two main components of our quantitative model analysis were (1) public opinion towards and (2) contact with refugees.…”