Narratives, information and immigration policy preferences’

Exposure to quantitative information about immigrants or narratives around the costs and benefits of immigration can alter people’s immigration policy preferences. Using a survey experiment with a representative sample of over 5,000 respondents in Australia, we find substantial and contradictory misperceptions across the number, origins and labour market attributes of immigrants. Most respondents prefer less immigration overall, but favour increased high-skilled immigration. Support for increased immigration rises by 4.5-7 percentage points when respondents are shown narratives on how immigrants can help improve housing affordability. Conversely, highlighting the perceived negative impacts of immigration on housing affordability reduces support for increasing or maintaining current immigration levels. Providing quantitative information on immigrants’ characteristics generates smaller increases in support for more immigration than narratives. For immigration from Pacific Island countries, exposure to quantitative information increases support for relaxing visa requirements but there is no evidence that narratives have any effect.

Alyssa Leng is a research officer at the Development Policy Centre within the Australian National University. Her research interests include applying microeconometric tools to development and political economy issues, and economic policy and development in Papua New Guinea. Alyssa is also a consultant for the World Bank, where she works on impact evaluation in the Pacific, and was previously a Research Fellow and Economist at the Lowy Institute.