Experimental Design Details
## Measuring changes in attitudes over time
How stable are the attitudes toward views on migrants and refugees over time? Some studies have suggested that public attitudes toward immigration are stable over time [@kustov2021stability]. However, analysis of polls indicates a gradual change in Europe, with countries like Germany becoming more inclusive while others adopting more excluding attitudes [@heath2016europeans]. Moreover, in response to Russia's invasion, Europeans' support of Ukrainians who sought shelter in the EU has been overwhelmingly positive compared to pre-war attitudes [@de2022refugee]. But it is unclear whether increased contact with refugees through an extended presence in the country and daily life may result in more positive attitudes [as suggested in @de2021contact] or an adverse reaction [as in @enos2014causal].
Understanding how and whether these attitudes will change requires further research.
<!-- For example, one might expect that an initial emotional reaction to an unexpected war in Europe may decrease in intensity over time. If so, people may revert to pre-war less inclusionary attitudes towards Ukrainians (and immigrants in general). -->
By comparing results across the two waves of this study, we want to assess to what extent public attitudes toward refugees can change over time.
- We expect personal preferences towards refugees in general and willingness to pay for their protection to be stable across cross-sectional surveys. Specifically, we estimate individual tendencies toward protection for different refugee groups using a discrete choice model (as described in wave one) and anticipate only minor differences in the estimated parameters between the two cross-sections.
- At the regional level (NUTS), we expect the average difference in support of Ukrainian refugees between the first and second waves to be driven mainly by environmental changes, such as an increase in the presence of refugees.
## Effectiveness of perspective-taking/getting interventions over time
Will the effectiveness of public interventions to promote inclusionary attitudes and help the refugees diminish over time? Here, we focus on the case of perspective-taking and perspective-getting interventions (as described in the first wave). Previous work has shown that the effect of perspective-taking diminishes over time for the same individual [@adida2018perspective]. We investigate whether the effectiveness of the same intervention differs when implemented at different stages of a refugee crisis across people with comparable characteristics.
As in wave one, we will estimate the average treatment effect on attitudes and behaviours (i.e., supporting Ukrainians on social media) of stimulating participants to take the perspective of a refugee or read narratives that give a refugee's perspective. We expect the treatment to be less effective in the second wave for several reasons. First, participants had more opportunities to interact with the refugees by the time of the second wave. This may have triggered a sense of empathy making our intervention redundant and less effective. Second, people may have already helped Ukrainian refugees and may be comparatively less inclined to make further contributions, lowering the effect size of our intervention.
<!-- - For example, frequency of interactions with them, mostly because intergroup contact negatively affects inclusionary attitudes [see, e.g., @enos2014causal]. -->
<!-- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-015-9913-1 -->
## Belief correction intervention
How to correct wrong beliefs about refugees that could negatively affect people's attitudes toward refugee protection? In the first wave, we observed a bias in how study participants perceived key characteristics of the Ukrainian refugees in their country. They tended to underestimate the fraction of adult women among the incoming refugees, among other characteristics. And we hypothesise that providing study participants with more information (specifically, statistics about the fraction of adult women among the Ukrainian refugees in their country) will "correct" possible wrong perceptions about refugee characteristics, which is important to determine personal attitudes toward refugee protection.
Specifically, we investigate to what extent participants will revise their beliefs about refugees in the direction of the information provided: upwards when the intervention gives a higher figure than the initial belief and downwards if it is lower.
We also hypothesise:
- The effect of the belief correction on the probability of revising the initial belief of adult women among the refugees will be stronger the farther the initial belief is from the provided information.
- An effect of the source of information, with official statistics being more effective in prompting study participants to change their beliefs about the fraction of adult women than other sources.
- A direct effect of the belief-correction intervention on other aspects of how people view the refugees. Specifically, since statistics have reported consistently that men commit more criminal acts than women, we expect that correcting beliefs about the fraction of women will lead to more positive views about the impact of the Ukrainian refugees on the crime situation in the host country (which we also ask in the survey).