When fear matters: varied foreign economic cooperation preferences in the face of conflict

How do perceived security threats shape individual preferences for international economic cooperation? Existing literature on individual trade and investment preferences reaches inconsistent conclusions, with evidence that individuals are alternately motivated by concerns about security externalities and hopes that economic cooperation will thwart future conflict. Using complementary survey experiments conducted in China (N = 1,140), India (N = 1,435), and the United States (N = 1,397), and focusing on security tensions in the US–China and China–India bilateral relationships, the article analyzes public support for bilateral trade and investment in the context of salient security fears. Results suggest that security fears motivate individual preferences for economic cooperation in complex ways: priming security fears increases individual support for broad measures of cooperation and trade, but also leads respondents to become more supportive of narrow measures of economic protectionism, including inward and outward investment restrictions and targeted export controls. These findings have several important implications. First, they add depth to existing theories of individual economic cooperation preferences, identifying the varied ways in which security fears affect economic preferences. Additionally, the results shed light on potential public opinion mechanisms behind the commercial peace phenomenon and suggest that this mechanism has declined in relevance as economic cooperation has become increasingly securitized.