Information, Attitudes, and Beliefs towards Migrants.

The objective of the study is to understand if providing information nudges to national natives living in four countries (Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and Chile) with a recent significant inflow of Venezuelan immigrants, has any effect on the attitudes that these individuals have of migrants and on their beliefs on the consequences of the migrant’s presence in their country. As the inflow of Venezuelans intensified during the last ten to five years, so did the biases and misconceptions with respect to their impact in the host country. Understanding if the provision of information influences attitudes and beliefs can help in the formulation and design of public policies aimed at removing the social and economic barriers to the integration of Venezuelans in these four countries.

In order to test this hypothesis, we are conducting a small-scale Randomized Control Trial (RCT) during the months of October to December 2021. This will be part of a larger data collection effort, a telephone-based household survey inquiring on the effects of Covid-19 on the welfare of households, where approximately 1000 individuals per country will be interviewed. Sample size was based on budget restrictions. The intervention itself consists of one treatment arm and one control group. In the treatment arm subjects will be read a sentence that contains facts on the characteristics of Venezuelan migrants in the country (specifically, what proportion of the national population do they represent and what proportion of public services -education and health- they use), before reading a battery of questions on individual’s attitudes and beliefs towards migrants. The control group will only answer the survey. The survey will be conducted by phone and the respondent will be informed of the purpose of the overall survey, and asked for consent to participate.