Political Discourse

The treatment consists of two vignettes describing proposed reforms to funding of political parties in Australia, that differ only in the framing of who funds these changes: a Taxpayer frame, in which public funding is described as coming from Australian taxpayers and a Citizen frame, where funding is described as coming from Australian citizens. Immediately after the vignette, respondents indicate whether they support the proposed changes.

2026-02-09

2026-02-20

Preferences for Income Inequality

This outcome measures respondents’ preferences for income inequality, elicited through a sequence of choices over graphical representations of income distributions. Respondents are shown pie charts depicting how total pre-tax national income is distributed across population groups (each representing 20% of the population, from the poorest to the richest group) and are asked to indicate which distribution better reflects their idea of a “good society.” This approach parallels Norton and Ariely (2011) and, as in that study, the graphical task allows respondents to express normative preferences over inequality without requiring familiarity with technical measures such as the Gini coefficient. Based on respondents’ choices across a sequence of binary comparisons, each participant is classified into one of four income distributions: a highly equal distribution (Sweden; Gini ≈ 0.29), a moderately equal distribution (Australia; Gini ≈ 0.34), a more unequal distribution (United States; Gini ≈ 0.42), and a highly unequal distribution (Brazil; Gini ≈ 0.52). The primary outcome is a numeric measure of preferred income inequality, constructed by mapping the preferred distribution to its corresponding Gini coefficient. Higher values of this outcome indicate a preference for more unequal income distributions.

Preferences for Redistribution

This outcome captures respondents’ preferences for governments involvement in the distribution of income, using an item from the World Values Survey, Wave 8 (2024–2026) (World Values Survey Association, 2024). Respondents place themselves on a 10-point scale between the statements “government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for” (1) and “people should take more responsibility to provide for themselves” (10). Lower values indicate stronger support for government involvement in redistribution, while higher values reflect greater emphasis on individual responsibility. It is important to notice that this outcome focuses on the role of the government (vs. individual) responsibility in reducing deprivation, rather than normative views about redistribution.

The study is an individual-level randomized survey experiment with two treatment arms. Respondents are randomly assigned to either a Taxpayer framing condition or a Citizen framing condition. Randomization is stratified by sex and household income (above/below the median). Outcomes are measured immediately after exposure to the treatment within the same survey.

Not available

Randomization conducted by computer within the survey platform (PureProfile), following a pre-specified stratified Randomization conducted by computer within the survey platform (PureProfile), following a pre-specified stratified randomization design.

Individual level

No

Not applicable (individual-level randomization)

Approximately 1,700 individual respondents

Approximately 850 respondents in the Taxpayer framing condition and 850 respondents in the Citizen framing condition

The study is powered to detect a minimum effect size of Cohen’s d = 0.151 on the primary outcome (preferences for income inequality), assuming a two-sided test with α = 0.05 and 80% power. Power calculations account for individual-level randomization with stratification by sex and household income. The expected analytic sample is approximately 1,383 respondents (about 692 per treatment arm) after pre-specified quality exclusions.