How information about race-based health disparities affects policy preferences: Evidence from a survey experiment about the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States
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1-s2.0-S0277953621002161-main.pdf
Size
2.31 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
b6891a68d9d87ff63518384dde4888e7
Author(s)
Harell, Allison
Lieberman, Evan S
Date Issued
May 2021
Journal
Social Science & Medicine
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Harell, Allison and Evan Lieberman. "How information about race-based health disparities affects policy preferences: Evidence from a survey experiment about the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States." Social Science & Medicine 277 (May 2021): 113884 © 2021 The Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
In this article, we report on the results of an experimental study to estimate the effects of delivering information about racial disparities in COVID-19-related death rates. On the one hand, we find that such information led to increased perception of risk among those Black respondents who lacked prior knowledge; and to increased support for a more concerted public health response among those White respondents who expressed favorable views towards Blacks at baseline. On the other hand, for Whites with colder views towards Blacks, the informational treatment had the opposite effect: it led to decreased risk perception and to lower levels of support for an aggressive response. Our findings highlight that well-intentioned public health campaigns spotlighting disparities might have adverse side effects and those ought to be considered as part of a broader strategy. The study contributes to a larger scholarly literature on the challenges of making and implementing social policy in racially-divided societies.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113884
