Out‐group penalties in refugee assistance: a survey experiment

We study out‐group biases in attitudes toward refugees, and the effect of European Union immigration policies on these views, with a survey experiment including 4,087 Italian respondents. We assess attitudes using donations to a randomly assigned group: Italian victims of violence, or refugees fleeing wars from either Ukraine or African countries. We also employ a novel measure, the share donated in cash, to detect subtler forms of prejudice. Donations were lower for African and Ukrainian refugees than for Italians. African beneficiaries received a small portion of the donation in cash, a behavior that reveals stronger prejudice against distant out‐groups and that characterizes mainly individuals with right‐leaning political views. Informing about immigration policy reforms had no impact. Textual analysis provides interpretations for these findings.