When guidance changes: Government stances and public beliefs

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rafkin, Charlie; Shreekumar, Advik; Vautrey, Pierre-Luc
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104319
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Government recommendations; Belief formation; Government credibility; Crisis management; Covid-19

摘要

Governments often make early recommendations about issues that remain uncertain. Do governments' early positions affect how much people believe the latest recommendations? We investigate this question using an incentivized online experiment with 1900 US respondents in early April 2020. We present all participants with the latest CDC projection about coronavirus death counts. We randomize exposure to information that highlights how President Trump previously downplayed the coronavirus threat. When the President's inconsistency is salient, participants are less likely to revise their prior beliefs about death counts from the projection. They also report lower trust in the government. These results align with a simple model of signal extraction from government communication, and have implications for the design of changing guidelines in other settings. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.