Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15237
Authors: Sabine Albrecht; Riccardo Ghidoni; Elena Cettolin; Sigrid Suetens
Abstract: Does exposure to ethnic minorities change the majority's attitudes towards them? We investigate this question using novel panel data on attitudes from a general-population sample in the Netherlands matched to geographical data on refugees. We find that people who live in neighborhoods of refugees for a sufficiently long time acquire a more positive attitude. Instead, people living in municipalities hosting refugees, but not in their close neighborhood, develop a more negative attitude. The positive neighborhood effect is particularly strong for groups that are likely to have personal contact with refugees suggesting that contact with minorities can effectively reduce prejudice.
Keywords: prejudice; ethnic diversity; attitudes to immigrants; discrimination; intergroup contact; refugee crisis; individual-level fixed-effects regressions; lab-in-the-field experiment
JEL Codes: J15; R23; D91; C23
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| exposure to ethnic minorities (J15) | majority attitudes towards them (J15) |
| living in close proximity to refugee centers (R23) | majority attitudes towards ethnic diversity (J15) |
| not living in close proximity to refugee centers (R23) | negative attitudes (D91) |
| exposure to ethnic minorities (J15) | attitudes towards ethnic diversity (J15) |
| living in neighborhoods with refugee centers for more than six months (R23) | improvement in attitudes towards ethnic diversity (J15) |
| increased personal contact with refugees (F22) | positive neighborhood effect (R23) |
| other forms of awareness or hearsay (Z00) | negative municipal effect (D62) |