LISS Grant 2021. Authors: Elske van den Hoogen, Willem de Koster, Jeroen van der Waal (Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences)
Euroscepticism features prominently in societal and scholarly debates. Following the adage to know it is to love it, educating the citizenry about the European Union (EU) is often assumed to dampen such negative EU attitudes. As the EU is vast and complex and people are generally ill-informed about it, the so-called information deficit model indeed seems promising. Yet, it has not been thoroughly scrutinised whether reducing citizens’ information deficit leads to more positive EU attitudes. We propose to analyse data from a randomised survey-experiment linked to previously collected LISS data (including pre-measures) to rigorously assess the causal impact of information provision on EU attitudes, and how this is shaped by both prior EU knowledge and populist attitudes. Our experimental treatment is a professionally produced short video providing easily understandable information on the principle of subsidiarity; a crucial case as recent research links Euroscepticism to concerns about national sovereignty.
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