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KNOWLEDGE FOR POLICY

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Projects and activities | Last updated: 08 Jan 2025

Attitudes towards displaced populations in the EU

Behavioural insights

Context

Immigration, with its benefits and challenges, has been an important and often controversial topic in European politics for decades. The outbreak of the war in Ukraine has brought the new urgency to the debate, as the number of forcibly displaced people in the EU increased dramatically. To meet the basic needs of the displaced, EU citizens responded with countless acts of solidarity, and the EU council activated the Temporary Protection Directive.

Goals

We seek to reach a deeper understanding of the roots of the favourable attitudes towards the displaced Ukrainian nationals in the EU, to monitor its dynamics, and to identify the scope of its consequences in terms of preferences for migration policies.

Methods

To accomplish this goal, we have designed a large randomized survey and distributed it in two waves to representative samples in six EU Member States. The questionnaire consists of several modules, including

  • a survey of attitudes towards displaced Ukrainians and policies aimed at supporting them,
  • an experiment investigating the consequences of correcting beliefs concerning the displaced Ukrainians,
  • an experiment investigating the potential of triggering helping behaviour by means of “perspective taking”, and
  • a conjoint experiment aimed at identifying characteristics of possible groups of displaced individuals that make EU citizens more vs. less willing to support these groups.

Outcomes

A technical report and several journal publications will serve to inform migration-related policymaking and communication.

Support for temporary protection of displaced populations in the EU: A conjoint experiment

Millions of people were forced to flee Ukraine after Russia’s invasion on February 24, 2022, one of the fastest displacements in decades. Citizens' response in EU countries (where most displaced Ukrainians arrived) has been considerably more positive than in past refugee crises. This study investigates several possible drivers of this difference. We conduct a large conjoint experiment in six EU Member States, eliciting willingness to provide temporary protection to hypothetical groups of future migrants whose characteristics we manipulate systematically. We find that all of the experimental variables make a difference. We observe a greater support for protecting groups consisting of relatively many children and many women rather than men. The region of origin and the religious affiliation also play a significant role. Finally, we see greater support for people fleeing a war rather than poverty or the adverse consequences of climate change. While all these effects are identified consistently across different groups of respondents (e.g., the respondent's religion played a limited role), effect sizes vary considerably between countries. Finally, randomly manipulate which aspect of temporary protection (social housing, access to the labour market) is emphasised in our communication to the participants. We find this manipulation to have a limited effect on the public support for the policy.

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