IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/empiri/v47y2020i4d10.1007_s10663-019-09461-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Creating Europe through culture? The impact of the European Song Contest on European identity

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Coupe

    (University of Canterbury)

  • Natalia Chaban

    (University of Canterbury)

Abstract

The UK’s Brexit vote marked a major institutional crisis for the EU and re-opened both the scholarly and the popular debate about the importance and drivers of a “European identity”. We use quasi-experimental data to estimate the immediate impact of the biggest pan-European cultural event, the Eurovision Song Contest, on whether people in Europe consider themselves to be Europeans. Using data from several Eurobarometer surveys with tens of thousands of observations, we find little evidence that the contest at current provides a sizeable immediate boost to the share of Europeans who feel European, feel EU citizens, or have a positive image of the EU.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Coupe & Natalia Chaban, 2020. "Creating Europe through culture? The impact of the European Song Contest on European identity," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 47(4), pages 885-908, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:empiri:v:47:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s10663-019-09461-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10663-019-09461-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10663-019-09461-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10663-019-09461-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joan Costa-i-Font & Frank Cowell, 2015. "European Identity and Redistributive Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 5412, CESifo.
    2. Laura Cram, 2012. "Does the EU Need a Navel? Implicit and Explicit Identification with the European Union," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(1), pages 71-86, January.
    3. Vittorio Bassi & Imran Rasul, 2017. "Persuasion: A Case Study of Papal Influences on Fertility-Related Beliefs and Behavior," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 250-302, October.
    4. George A. Akerlof & Rachel E. Kranton, 2000. "Economics and Identity," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 715-753.
    5. Felbermayr, Gabriel J. & Toubal, Farid, 2010. "Cultural proximity and trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 279-293, February.
    6. Aleberto Alesina & Guido Tabellini & Francesco Trebbi, 2017. "Is Europe an Optimal Political Area?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 48(1 (Spring), pages 169-234.
    7. Hoff, Karla & Pandey, Priyanka, 2014. "Making up people—The effect of identity on performance in a modernizing society," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 118-131.
    8. Ginsburgh, Victor & Noury, Abdul G., 2008. "The Eurovision Song Contest. Is voting political or cultural?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 41-52, March.
    9. Pamela Jakiela & Owen Ozier, 2019. "The Impact of Violence on Individual Risk Preferences: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(3), pages 547-559, July.
    10. Jan Goebel & Christian Krekel & Tim Tiefenbach & Nicolas Ziebarth, 2015. "How natural disasters can affect environmental concerns, risk aversion, and even politics: evidence from Fukushima and three European countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 1137-1180, October.
    11. Robert Metcalfe & Nattavudh Powdthavee & Paul Dolan, 2011. "Destruction and Distress: Using a Quasi‐Experiment to Show the Effects of the September 11 Attacks on Mental Well‐Being in the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(550), pages 81-103, February.
    12. Daniel J. Benjamin & James J. Choi & A. Joshua Strickland, 2010. "Social Identity and Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1913-1928, September.
    13. Laura Spierdijk & Michel Vellekoop, 2009. "The structure of bias in peer voting systems: lessons from the Eurovision Song Contest," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 36(2), pages 403-425, May.
    14. Ari Kokko & Patrik Gustavsson Tingvall, 2014. "Distance, Transaction Costs, and Preferences in European Trade," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(2), pages 87-120, June.
    15. Gerard J. Tellis & Philip Hans Franses, 2006. "Optimal Data Interval for Estimating Advertising Response," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(3), pages 217-229, 05-06.
    16. Robert Metcalfe & Nattavudh Powdthavee & Paul Dolan, "undated". "Destruction and distress: using a quasi-experiment to show the effects of the September 11 attacks on subjective well-being in the UK," Discussion Papers 09/10, Department of Economics, University of York.
    17. Oriol Aspachs-Bracons & Irma Clots-Figueras & Joan Costa-Font & Paolo Masella, 2008. "Compulsory Language Educational Policies and Identity Formation," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(2-3), pages 434-444, 04-05.
    18. Irma Clots‐Figueras & Paolo Masella, 2013. "Education, Language and Identity," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0, pages 332-357, August.
    19. Claes de Vreese & Rachid Azrout & Judith Moeller, 2016. "Cross Road Elections: Change in EU Performance Evaluations during the European Parliament Elections 2014," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(1), pages 69-82.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Hila Zahavi & Gal Ariely, 2023. "External perceptions of the European Union in Israel—the role of norms and culture," European Union Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 708-725, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Clist, Paul & Verschoor, Arjan, 2017. "Multilingualism and public goods provision: An experiment in two languages in Uganda," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 47-57.
    2. Tom Coupé & Natalia Chaban, 2018. "The Impact of the European Song Contest on European Identity," Working Papers in Economics 18/03, University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance.
    3. Grote, Nora & Klausmann, Tim & Scharfbillig, Mario, 2023. "Investment in identity in the field-Nudging refugees’ integration effort," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    4. Nora Grote & Tim Klausmann & Mario Scharfbillig, 2019. "Investment in Identity in the Field - Nudging Refugees' Integration Effort," Working Papers 1905, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, revised 24 Sep 2021.
    5. Felbermayr, Gabriel J. & Toubal, Farid, 2010. "Cultural proximity and trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 279-293, February.
    6. Adrian Chadi, 2019. "Dissatisfied with life or with being interviewed? Happiness and the motivation to participate in a survey," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(3), pages 519-553, October.
    7. Dolls, Mathias, 2024. "An unemployment re-insurance scheme for the eurozone? Stabilizing and redistributive effects," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    8. Vecci, Joseph & Zelinsky, Tomas, 2016. "Social Identity and Role Models," Working Papers in Economics 672, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    9. Jun Luo & Yefeng Chen & Haoran He & Guanlin Gao, 2019. "Hukou identity and fairness in the ultimatum game," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 389-420, October.
    10. Sarah Ciaglia & Clemens Fuest & Friedrich Heinemann, 2018. "What a feeling?! How to promote ‘European Identity’," EconPol Policy Reports 9, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    11. Yuki, Kazuhiro, 2021. "Modernization, social identity, and ethnic conflict," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    12. Sirus Dehdari & Kai Gehring, 2017. "The Origins of Common Identity: Division, Homogenization Policies and Identity Formation in Alsace-Lorraine," CESifo Working Paper Series 6556, CESifo.
    13. Jonathan Norris, 2019. "Identify economics: social influence and skill development," Working Papers 1908, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    14. Joan Costa-Font & Frank Cowell, 2015. "Social Identity And Redistributive Preferences: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 357-374, April.
    15. Gupta, Gautam & Mahmud, Minhaj & Maitra, Pushkar & Mitra, Santanu & Neelim, Ananta, 2018. "Religion, minority status, and trust: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 180-205.
    16. Adrian Chadi & Matthias Krapf, 2017. "The Protestant Fiscal Ethic: Religious Confession And Euro Skepticism In Germany," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1813-1832, October.
    17. Afridi, Farzana & Li, Sherry Xin & Ren, Yufei, 2015. "Social identity and inequality: The impact of China's hukou system," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 17-29.
    18. Paolo Masella, 2013. "National identity and ethnic diversity," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 26(2), pages 437-454, April.
    19. Asmat, Roberto & Borowiecki, Karol J. & Law, Marc T., 2023. "Do experts and laypersons differ? Some evidence from international classical music competitions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 270-290.
    20. Jiang, Jiang & Li, Sherry Xin, 2019. "Group identity and partnership," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 202-213.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    European identity; Eurovision; Quasi-experiment; Culture;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • Z1 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics

    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:kap:empiri:v:47:y:2020:i:4:d:10.1007_s10663-019-09461-6. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.