Research project grants

Citizens’ Demand for Local Representation and the Green Transition: Amplifying Voice or Delaying Action? (German Research Foundation, 01.08.2026 – 31.07.2029, 386’740 €) (PI, with T. Däubler) Abstract

Spatial inequalities are prevalent in many established democracies, often leading to place-based resentment and urban-rural polarization. The Green Transition may exacerbate these divides by imposing localized costs in exchange for diffuse, future benefits. Recent studies highlight that the distributional impacts of the Green Transition could significantly hinder its implementation.
This project examines the role of local political representation in this context, focusing on the demand side: citizens‘ preferences. We start from the fundamental ambiguity that while local representation may give a voice to disadvantaged groups, it could also reflect parochial views that obstruct the broader goal of a greener society.
Conceptually, we differentiate between electoral support for local candidates and demand for local representation. Our first objective is to analyze the electoral home advantage of candidates and its variation across space and time, particularly in relation to spatial inequalities and the impact of infrastructure projects with perceived local costs. Our second objective is to investigate the nature of the demand for local representation and its effects on the Green Transition, assessing whether local representation facilitates or hinders climate change mitigation efforts.
The empirical focus is on the German state of Bavaria, a case exceptionally well-suited for our purposes. In elections to the Bavarian state parliament, citizens can choose among multiple candidates within parties. This setup allows for a long-term analysis (1966-2023) of support for local representatives at a higher level. Additionally, Bavaria has undergone significant economic and social change during this period, providing a promising context to examine the effects of spatial inequality. The presence of large-scale green infrastructure projects facilitates realistic survey experiments to assess underlying mechanisms.
The project is organized into two work packages (WPs) with distinct temporal foci and evidence types. WP1 will analyze aggregate behavioral data from past elections using quasi-experimental methods to identify contextual factors influencing local political support. WP2 will gather original micro-level data with two survey-embedded experiments focused on Green Transition projects. These will reveal mechanisms behind the demand for local representation and contribute to further theory development while addressing highly relevant real-world questions.
The project will contribute to a better understanding of local representation and the complex relationship between the preferences of citizens, politicians, and policy in the context of the Green Transition. Led by a team with a track record of excellent joint publications, the output will consist of at least six journal articles plus several novel datasets. Our findings will inform debates on spatial inequalities, effective implementation of climate change mitigation policies, and institutional reform.

The Comparative Legitimacy of Arms Exports in Top-Exporting EU and NATO Countries (German Foundation for Peace Research, 01.12.2022 – 31.05.2026, 150’000 €) (PI, with P. Thurner) Abstract

The Russian army’s invasion of Ukraine sheds light on the central question of our research project: Should weapons be supplied to other countries? Under what conditions? What do the citizens of the main exporting states in the EU and NATO think about this? The example of Ukraine shows: Arms transfers can shape the political discussion in democratic states. Given the volatility of opinion polls, citizens‘ attitudes on this issue appear to be changeable, and the levels of support vary between countries. Surprisingly, however, there is little general research on public attitudes to arms transfers. Beyond the current and acute case of Ukraine, arms exports are repeatedly contested to varying degrees among political parties and in the public spheres in different nation-states. One of the main arguments put forward by civil society groups and, in particular, by parties of the political left is the possible impact of such transfers: the initiation, intensification or prolongation of armed conflicts, the violation of human rights or the stabilization of non-democratic regimes. Counterarguments point to economic and security interests of the sending state, or the support for legitimate defense interests of the receiving state. It is completely open whether the political discussion of such arguments is also reflected in citizens‘ attitudes toward arms exports. It is also unclear whether trade-offs between the various aspects actually differ in different countries. It is often argued that, compared to the German population, the populations of other Western democracies with a central role in the international arms transfer system (the United States, France, Italy, the United Kingdom) have much lower concerns about such exports. Thus, a cross-national comparison of voter reactions to arms exports is particularly important to test the assumption of German specificity.

Based on an innovative methodological approach, our project attempts to provide important answers to these essential questions. Using so-called conjoint designs, we implement an experimental format within population-representative surveys. Respondents are repeatedly confronted with multidimensional hypothetical choices between scenarios that differ in decision criteria (attributes). The decision tasks are designed to mimic specific policy options. Respondents are then asked to rank the scenarios and select their preferred option. In this way, we can determine the causal effect of the manipulated dimensions of these scenarios. The project will focus on the comparative relevance of morally legal, economic and security aspects in assessing the legitimacy of arms exports. It will identify value trade-offs between perceived impacts on economic welfare (jobs, innovation, etc.) and normative considerations (risk or presence of conflict, human rights violations, regime characteristics of the importer).

Climate Risk, Land Loss, and Migration: Evidence from a Quasi-Experiment in Bangladesh (Swiss National Science Foundation, 01.09.2019 – 31.08.2024, 442’284 CHF) (Co-PI with V. Koubi) [Reporting in SZ-Daily] [Reporting in Reportagen-Magazine] [Podcast] Abstract

Global climate change is one of the most important and severe challenges the international community has ever faced. Existing evidence shows that it will have far-reaching repercussions for ecosystems and humans alike. Moreover, climate change is expected to induce mass-population dislocations, i.e., migration, due to droughts, sea level rise, or extreme weather events, such as stronger and more frequent storms or floods, particularly in developing countries with low capacity to protect themselves and adapt to climate change. However, recent studies on climate change induced human displacement do not account for the possibility that people might adapt to changing climatic conditions. This is particularly relevant to slow-onset environmental changes, such as sea-level rise, where individuals and societies can anticipate such changes and take precautionary measures. With this project, we aim at contributing to a better understanding of whether, when, and how environmental changes lead to human migration. First, we will offer a theoretical micro-foundation for the environment-migration nexus that highlights the different (i.e., behavioral, structural, and environmental) factors that induce people to migrate or stay. In particular, our framework proposes that there are multiple drivers behind decisions to migrate and that environmental changes are just one of them, which can have both direct effects on migration as well as indirect ones through impacts on other factors, such as individual/household economic well-being. Consequently, our framework seeks to bring analytical rigor to a field that has been dominated by unsubstantiated and casual empiricism. Second, we seek to provide credible empirical inferences concerning rates of migration due to livelihood losses caused by environmental changes. Since human exposure to environmental stress, whether induced by climatic changes or other factors, is non-randomly assigned, using observational data to empirically examine environmental migration is challenging. To cope with this challenge, we will focus on a particular case and develop risk maps for riverbank erosion along the Jamuna River in Bangladesh, and we will collect micro-level data to compare affected and unaffected populations at a similar baseline risk, as well as migrants and non-migrants from the very same area. The aim is to isolate the causal effect of deteriorating environmental livelihoods on migration.The project will not only identify the effect of environmental stress on migration behavior of individuals and communities in a particular case. It will also provide valuable insights of broader relevance into whether and how societies react, or could react, to slow-onset climatic changes such as se-level rise, drought, and soil/water salinity. Moreover, the methodology developed in the project can be applied in other cases and can inform prediction models of future climate-induced migration rates. The findings can be utilized by institutional actors at both local and international levels when seeking to identify policy options to increase the adaptive capacity of populations vulnerable to climatic changes.

Einstellungen zu Waffenhandel in Deutschland und Frankreich – A Conjoint Experiment on the Comparative Legitimacy of Arms Exports in Germany and France (German Foundation for Peace Research, 01.06.2020 – 31.05.2021, 24’000 € (PI, with P. Thurner) Abstract

The export of arms is severely contested between the German political parties and in the German public. A major argument by opposing civil society groups and mainly leftist parties is the reference to the supposed implications of such transfers: the triggering of civil and international conflict, the prolongation of such conflicts and their aggravation in terms of human losses, the violations of human rights, and the stabilization of non-democratic regimes. It is open, however, whether the political discussion of such arguments is also reflected in citizens’ attitudes towards arms exports. There is also no research on the question whether such attitudes differ systematically across countries. E.g., it seems that other Western democracies with a dominant role in the international arms transfer system like the US, the UK and France are less strongly opposing such exports. We want to provide a thorough empirical foundation for these anecdotal claims which is currently lacking in both scientific and public debate. Thus, a cross-country comparison of voter reactions towards arms exports is especially important for testing the assumption of the presence of a German specificity, but also for the internal reliability of alliances like NATO, or of a recently proposed European Defense Policy including the respective research and development initiatives like the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). If decisions to transfers arms to countries like Saudi-Arabia, to the Kurds etc. cannot be supported by the German government due specific attitudes in its civil society, this will have consequences for the design of future cooperative defense and security regimes. In the case of France and Germany, open disputes over principles of the exports of jointly developed weapons have even led both countries to settle their conflict in the their Aachen Treaty in 2019, and in more detail in a Franco-German agreement on export controls in October 2019 (see Décret n° 2019-1168 du 13 novembre 2019). This pilot project seeks to provide answers to these essential questions building on an innovative methodical approach. It will use conjoint experiments to be implemented in two selected countries – Germany and France. According to SIPRIs 2019 Weapons transfer statistics, these two countries belong to the top 5 group of exporters of major weapons. In France, these exports are rather seldom a topic of political debates, in Germany that’s repeatedly the contrary.
Conjoint experiments allow to implement an experimental setting within a survey format. Respondents are several times confronted with multidimensional hypothetical decisions between choice sets which differ according to several dimensions (choice attributes). These decision tasks are designed in a way that they mimick concrete policy design options. Respondents are then asked to rate the individual choices and they select their preferred option. Attribute levels, i.e. the concrete description of the situation, are randomly assigned within choice sets. This enables the researcher to identify how choice characteristics causally affect both the rating and choice probability of a policy package in a within subject and between subject-design. We can thereby determine the causal effect of the manipulated dimensions of these scenarios. The project will for the first time focus on the comparative relevance of moral, economic and security aspects on the assessment of the legitimacy of weapons exports in Germany and France. It will derive value trade-offs between the perceived economic welfare impact (jobs, innovation etc.) and normative considerations (risk or presence of conflicts, human rights violations, regime characteristics of the importer). We expect these latter aspects to decrease the acceptance of arms exports in general. However, we anticipate these effects to be smaller or inexistent (ceteris paribus) in the case of France due to a different political history and culture. If this expectation is refuted, than it is rather institutional background conditions like the electoral system and the consequence of a low politicization in such settings of party competition. The pilot character of this study would may invite us to extend this design to more countries (especially to France and to the US) in later periods, and to elaborate in a more detailed way on the time- and context dependent interplay between economic and normative considerations in weapons exports.

Working papers (submitted/conference drafts)

Vignette Experiments Can Replicate Actual Behavioral Intent, but May Overstate Behavior: Panel Evidence on Environmental Migration from Bangladesh (R&R) [Link to Manuscript] Abstract

Can survey-experimental scenarios replicate real-world behavior/behavioral intent? I study a population in rural Bangladesh (N=1600) along the banks of the Jamuna River, at risk of being affected by riverbank erosion and floods. I compare their replies to questions on hypothetical movement behavior if hypothetically affected by natural disaster (pre-monsoon, May-June 2021) to migration intentions and actual migration 2-6 months later after quasi-experimental actual exposure (post-monsoon, August/September 2022/January 2023). Results show that hypothetical as well as actual affectedness and risk shape migration intent and behavior similarly. However, the vignette experiment is approximating actual migration intent more closely than migration, indicating that survey experimental approaches likely overestimate actual behavior, while capturing behavioral intent well. Given the evidence base for the external validity of survey experiments is slim, this study contributes a crucial comparison from a rarely studied developing-country context on the extent to which survey-experimental scenarios generalize to real-world exposure.

NATO’s Strategic Culture(s). Public Opinion on Arms Transfers in Top Five Exporting Countries (R&R)
(with F. Haggerty and P. Thurner)
[Link to Manuscript] Abstract

Weapons transfers to foreign countries – a proliferation of conventional coercive technologies – became politicized in Western democracies in recent years, whereby fundamental tradeoffs between security-related, economic, and normative aspects are discussed. We propose that how these tradeoffs are solved is indicative of a more general strategic culture of countries. We investigate how the public views these tradeoffs and how homogeneous the underlying preference structure in NATO’s top arms-exporting democracies (the US, UK, France, Germany, and Italy) is. Using a multidimensional measurement strategy via a conjoint experiment (N~10,000), we show that normative aspects predominate for all populations when forming preferences on export policies. However, we observe that Germany and Italy are essentially divided from the other three countries, regarding whether security aspects are considered in preference formation. Building on recent (machine learning) methods, we propose that this difference can be primarily attributed to the country of the respondents, indicating different strategic subcultures.

Selecting Good Types or Holding Incumbents Accountable? Evidence from Reoccurring Floods
Abstract

A growing literature draws on natural disasters to assess how voters hold governments accountable and finds that good management benefits incumbents. This suggests that voters see disaster management as a test case that acts as an information shock, revealing unobserved incumbent quality. Theoretically, this depends on the perception and attribution of incumbent responsibility. Additionally, past experience with exposure should moderate voters’ appraisal, as should the current level of esteem the incumbent holds. I provide evidence that the electoral response to disaster management is heterogeneous along these dimensions. Drawing on the exceptional case of four centennial floods in Germany, occurring within a decade and right before elections, I show that exposure leads to vote gains for federal and state incumbents. The response of indirectly affected voters indicates strong ‘demonstration effects’. I then discuss evidence that explains heterogeneity across the floods. Overall, the case allows to infer whether voters select prospectively or retrospectively.

Panel data on mobility, socio-economic, and political impacts of riverbank erosion and flooding in Bangladesh (under review) (with J. Freihardt, and V. Koubi)
[Link to Data] [Pre-Registration] Abstract

We present the Bangladesh Environmental Mobility Panel (BEMP), a household panel along Bangladesh’s Jamuna River that traces the impacts of riverbank erosion and flooding on (im)mobility including short- and long-distance movements, socio-economic outcomes, and political attitudes. The dataset follows 1,691 households with a total of 2,170 panel respondents from 2021–2024 through four annual in-person survey waves and ten bi-monthly phone survey waves, yielding 24,279 completed surveys. Respondent selection via a spatially randomized draw and low attrition support generalizability to villages at risk of erosion along the 250 km eastern bank of the Jamuna River. Migrants were tracked, and the plausibly exogenous timing of erosion supports research designs linking environmental shocks to mobility. Surveys include measures of socio-demographics, livelihoods, economic outcomes and well-being, conflict and cooperation, and political attitudes, supporting questions in development economics and politics in a rural Global South setting. The design enables gender- and age-sensitive analyses by interviewing household heads (n=1,691), additional senior female (n=269) and youth (n=210) respondents, and left-behind members of migrating-head households (n=273), complemented by village profiles, focus group discussions, and qualitative interviews with women.

Inequality and Immigration Do Not Necessarily Increase Welfare Chauvinism – A Replication of Two Influential Studies (research-led teaching project, LMU Munich) (under review) (with J. Geith, A. Passer-Jähnel, and S. Rueß)
[Link to Manuscript] [Pre-Registration] Abstract

How do inequality and immigration affect support for redistribution? We study this question in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has elevated the salience of redistributive policies and decreased the salience of immigration. We build upon studies of Magni (2021) and Alesina, Miano and Stantcheva (2023) that showed that priming respondents on inequality or immigration can link to preferences for redistribution (the former positively, the latter negatively) and increase welfare chauvinism. We revisit these claims drawing on survey-experimental primes in a quota-representative sample of around (N=1.587) German citizens. Our findings are partly contrary to prior evidence, underlining that previous studies may be context-dependent on times of exceptionally high immigration salience.

Who believes Russian propaganda in Germany? A survey study of alternative media users (with E. Kuznetsova, M. Stolze, N. Tsarskaia, V. Vziatysheva) (under review)

Local economic benefits do not shape citizens’ preferences on arms export policy (with P. Binder, F. Haggerty, and P. Thurner) (under review)

Intersectional representative bureaucracy in Europe (with E. Thomann, J. Díaz) (under review)

Maximize Power: Online Survey Panels and the Price-Quality Trade-Off (with L. Seelkopf) (under review)
[Link to Manuscript] Abstract

The use of survey-experimental research with online access panels provided by marketing research companies has grown significantly in the social sciences. These panels offer rapid access to quota-representative samples, enabling generalizable findings alongside causal inferences. However, researchers face a wide range of pricing options, with higher-priced companies often claiming superior quality in terms of respondent attentiveness, honesty, and representativity beyond quota characteristics. This creates a potential trade-off between sample quality and the statistical power achievable within a given research budget. Our study examines this trade-off within the context of Germany, the largest economy in Europe. We solicited bids from all marketing research companies operating in the German market to conduct survey-experimental research. From these, we selected three companies representing low, medium, and high price points, each corresponding to self-reported panel quality. Using identical vignette, priming, and conjoint experiments, along with standard socio-demographic and attitudinal measures relevant to political behavior research, we compared the outcomes across these quota-representative samples. Our findings suggest that for experimental designs, the trade-off between price and quality is less pronounced than commonly assumed. Based on this evidence, we recommend prioritizing statistical power by minimizing costs per respondent.

Work in progress (original survey data collection completed)

How Attitudes towards Arms Exports Change After Wars in the Neighborhood: Evidence from Repeated Conjoint Experiments in France and Germany 2020 and 2023 (with F. Haggerty and P. Thurner)

Environmental Migration and Conflict Perceptions (with S. Kaenner, V. Koubi, and Nina von Uexkull)

Environmental Shocks and Outmigration (with V. Koubi, M. Marbach, and K. Smith)

Floods and Democratic Accountability – Evidence from Bangladesh

The Uncertain Consequences of Saving the Climate: Ego- and Sociotropic Preferences for Green Taxes (with L. Seelkopf)

Public Support for Large-scale Photovoltaic Installations — Survey Experimental Evidence from Switzerland (with J. Hirn)

Effects of the 2023 Electoral Reform on Party Strategy in the 2025 German National Election (with A. Leininger and J. Rehmert)

Two-Column Ballot Designs and Candidate Order Effects (with S. Shikano) [Pre-Registration]