IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jexpos/v4y2017i02p119-128_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

We Spend How Much? Misperceptions, Innumeracy, and Support for the Foreign Aid in the United States and Great Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Scotto, Thomas J.
  • Reifler, Jason
  • Hudson, David
  • vanHeerde-Hudson, Jennifer

Abstract

Majorities of citizens in high-income countries often oppose foreign aid spending. One popular explanation is that the public overestimates the percentage and amount of taxpayer funds that goes toward overseas aid. Does expressing aid flows in dollar and/or percentage terms shift public opinion toward aid? We report the results of an experiment examining differences in support for aid spending as a function of the information American and British respondents receive about foreign aid spending. In both nations, providing respondents with information about foreign aid spending as a percentage of the national budget significantly reduces support for cuts. The findings suggest that support for aid can be increased, but significant opposition to aid spending remains.

Suggested Citation

  • Scotto, Thomas J. & Reifler, Jason & Hudson, David & vanHeerde-Hudson, Jennifer, 2017. "We Spend How Much? Misperceptions, Innumeracy, and Support for the Foreign Aid in the United States and Great Britain," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(2), pages 119-128, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jexpos:v:4:y:2017:i:02:p:119-128_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S2052263017000069/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Spencer Henson & John‐Michael Davis & Liam Swiss, 2022. "Understanding public support for Canadian aid to developing countries: The role of information," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(1), January.
    2. Bernhard Reinsberg & Sebastian Dellepiane, 2022. "Development co‐operation by European regions: Introducing the subnational donor governance dataset," Development Policy Review, Overseas Development Institute, vol. 40(6), November.
    3. Kobayashi, Yoshiharu & Heinrich, Tobias & Bryant, Kristin A., 2021. "Public support for development aid during the COVID-19 pandemic," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    4. Bernhard Reinsberg & Haley Swedlund, 2023. "How transparent are aid agencies to their citizens? Introducing the Citizen Aid Transparency Dataset," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 35(7), pages 2177-2212, October.
    5. Jens Eger & Sebastian H. Schneider & Martin Bruder & Solveig H. Gleser, 2023. "Does Evidence Matter? The Impact of Evidence Regarding Aid Effectiveness on Attitudes Towards Aid," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 35(5), pages 1149-1172, October.
    6. Schneider, Sebastian H. & Eger, Jens & Bruder, Martin & Faust, Jörg & Wieler, Lothar H., 2021. "Does the COVID-19 pandemic threaten global solidarity? Evidence from Germany," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jexpos:v:4:y:2017:i:02:p:119-128_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/xps .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.