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This paper studies the determinants of support for future generations, using novel survey data for the case of Germany. I find significant, but not overwhelming support for prioritizing the needs of future generations vs. the acute needs of present-day citizens. Moreover, individual-level and contextual factors matter too. High-income and highly educated citizens are on average more supportive of the needs of future generations, the elderly and women less so. Left-wing supporters are equally more supportive of future generations, especially supporters of the Greens and those subscribing to 'green-alternative-liberal' values. Supporters of the right-wing populist AfD are most strongly opposed. General political trust boosts support for future generations, and economically thriving local economies are associated with higher levels of support for future generations as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a cross-cultural comparison in the field of spiral of silence online. We investigated the effects of user comments on public opinion perception and users' opinions and willingness to speak out in two cultural settings. Previous research has indicated that spiral of silence effects are greater in collectivistic versus individualistic cultures. Our study was conducted in South Korea, which is collectivistic and Germany, which is individualistic. To test the conformity and silencing hypotheses, we conducted online experiments using comments on online news sites that were congruent or incongruent with personal opinion. Our findings supported the conformity hypothesis and the impact of context on public opinion perception and personal opinion, which were shaped by comments in both countries. In Germany, effects were confined to highly collectivistic users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies have reported a right-leaning bias in the media's reporting of how the public thinks of political issues, raising the question: Why, and to what extent, is this the case? One reason in particular has been discussed in this regard: Journalists judge public opinion to be more right leaning than it actually is (Beckers et al. 2021; Lewis et al. 2004). This paper therefore studies to what extent journalists misjudge audience opinion. The analyses are based on large-scale representative surveys of journalists (1993/2005) and the voting-age population (1994/2005) in Germany. Results show that German journalists (mis-)judge audience opinion to be more right-leaning than the audience sees itself. The results also show that journalists judge audience opinion to be to the right of their own stances, and that journalists in federal states with a right-leaning government and in West Germany judge audience opinion to be even further to the right. Audience feedback does not push journalists' judgements of their audience towards the right, however. These results are discussed vis-à-vis research showing that there is a consistent bias in the depiction of opinions expressed by ordinary citizens, and research documenting that political elites overestimate public support for right-wing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many countries face substantial shortages of skilled nurses. With an aging population and global demographic changes, developing a skilled workforce of nurses has become one of the central challenges for public health care. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated labor shortages, which pose a threat to the quality of publicly provided health care. Improving nurses' working conditions could be a means by which to address the global shortages of nurses. However, in countries with public health care, such improvements may come with additional costs in the form of higher taxes or social security contributions. Therefore, such improvements partly depend on people's willingness to pay (WTP) for them. In this paper, we investigate workers' willingness to pay for improvements in the working conditions of nurses. This study is a factorial survey experiment included as part of an online survey. The factorial survey experiment was implemented within the high-frequency online panel survey "Life and Employment in Times of Corona" (IAB-HOPP) conducted by the Institute for Employment Research (Germany). We analyze data from N = 2128 survey participants; our main analysis consists of N = 6384 responses from those participants. Our research is based on a factorial survey experiment (vignette analysis) designed to quantitatively measure the willingness to pay for various improvements in the working conditions of nurses. We use random effect models and mixed models to estimate the individual-level willingness to pay for these improvements. Our results show that the survey participants are generally willing to pay for particular policies aimed at improving the working conditions of nurses. However, the amount that respondents are willing to pay varies with the type of policy changes. Survey participants exhibit a high willingness to pay for increases in minimum wages for nurses and wage-related improvements in general. We find, however, a lower willingness to pay for the right to participate in training courses aimed at reducing work-related stress. The broad support for improvements in the working conditions of nurses provides policymakers with some guidance in implementing policy measures that might address labor shortages in the nursing sector. There was no preregistration. Many people are willing to pay extra to improve the working conditions of nurses. Wage-related increases for nurses show the highest willingness to pay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interest groups are often seen as transmission belts of public preferences, little is known as to how they might transmit such preferences. This paper argues that the provision of information is one mechanism through which advocates represent their constituents' interests and analyses who informs policymakers about these preferences and when actors are more likely to do so. The study relies on a new dataset containing information on the arguments advocates made in public hearings that were held on 34 specific policy issues in Germany. The results reveal that the amount of information on public preferences an actor provides is determined by actor type, its public support and position on the issue. Interestingly, information on public preferences is predominantly used by status-quo defenders. This paper contributes to our understanding of interest groups as transmission belts and their potential to enhance governments' ability to respond to public preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians and media frequently invoke immigration threats to shape public opinion. But how do outgroup threat frames affect norms of citizenship, including behavior, liberal value commitments, and national belonging? This paper presents evidence from an embedded vignette survey experiment in three immigrant-receiving societies: United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. I find immigration threats are filtered through partisanship in polarized settings, and asymmetrically affect norms of "good citizenship" among individuals on the partisan left. However, we see variation within this group: Democrats (US) de-value norms of behavior, like voting and being informed, while Labor supports (UK) repudiate liberal norms like tolerance and rally around national belonging. By contrast, in Germany, we observe more consensus in citizenship norm responses. The strong effect of immigration threat framing on the partisan left brings our attention to the strategic use of immigration discourse to move traditionally sympathetic citizens away from democratic civic ideals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an amendment to and empirical application of the much-acclaimed concept of market-based banking to the case of German Sparkassen. It does this by challenging both public and scholarly opinion on savings banks as resilient spearheads of traditional banking and relationship lending. Through a close and structured comparison of two thrift institutions in the context of the entire savings banks sector during three decades it demonstrates that alternative banks should not necessarily be considered as bulwarks against financialisation, but analysed more carefully with respect to various push and pull factors, while bearing in mind the changing context in which they operate. This not only opens up new paths for further research on the relationship of structure and agency in an era of finance-led accumulation but stimulates a critical debate on the prerequisites of and perils to not-solely for-profit financial services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research note, I analyse the case of DiEM25, a pan-European movement that decided to contest for the 2019 European elections and ran in seven different countries with the same programme. Focussing on Germany, I discuss how the different logics of spontaneity in social movements and party politics both enabled and constrained the electoral campaign. Building on official documentation as well as my own experience as part of the campaign, I suggest that organizational complexity, lack of resources and reluctance to embrace electoral politics on the part of movement-oriented members finally contributed to the failure to secure seats in European parliament. The paper also contextualizes both the political junctures of DiEM25's emergence and the political opportunity structures in Germany at the time of the campaign arguing that the political space was quite narrow in light of political contenders and public opinion in Germany in relation to the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern welfare regimes rest on a range of actors – state, market, family/households, employers and charities – but austerity programmes diminish the contribution of the state. While changes in this 'welfare mix' require support from the population, attitude studies have focused mainly on people's views on state responsibilities, using welfare regime theory to explain differences. This paper contributes to our understanding of the welfare mix by including other providers such as the market, the family or employers, and also introduces social risk theories, contrasting new and old risks. Regime theory implies differences will persist over time, but risk theory suggests that growing similarities in certain risks may tend to promote international convergence. This article examines attitudes to the roles of state, market, family, charity/community and employer for pension and childcare in Germany and the UK. We collected data using deliberative forums, a new method in social policy research that allows citizens space to pursue extended lightly moderated discussion and permits researchers to analyse people's justifications for their attitudes. Our research indicated patterns of convergence especially in preferences for childcare, but that regime predominates in people's justifications for their attitudes: regime differences in attitudes are resilient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Petitions, as one of the most popular forms of political participation, offer citizens a bottom-up, comparatively low effort means to communicate their wishes to politicians and the public. This article analyses all steps of the petitions process to assess whether it provides all citizens with equal opportunities for participation as well as for realising political voice, with a particular focus on the role of online petitions and the German Bundestag. By surveying hundreds of petitioners--both those using traditional paper petitions and those who use the Internet to submit a petition--along with a representative survey of the population, this study confirms the traditional sociodemographic biases in participation. Online petitions attract younger people and support realising voice through recruiting supporters but do not offer more equality in participation. While the Petition Committee of the Bundestag does not treat certain groups of petitioners preferentially, those submitting petitions on paper have better chances for realising political voice. Overall only a few citizens feel they have realised political voice through their petition, resulting in widespread dissatisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What theories explain variation in public opinion toward asylum seekers? We implement a survey experiment in which a representative sample of German residents evaluates vignettes of asylum seekers, which randomly vary attributes that speak to deservingness, economic and religious threat, and gender considerations of attitude formation. We find strong support for deservingness theories. Economic and religious threat theories also receive empirical support. Gender plays a negligible role. Importantly, we also document that economic and—to a lesser extent—religious threat considerations only matter when respondents evaluate economic refugees. By contrast, political refugees are welcomed nearly unconditionally. Our paper thus replicates key findings from Bansak, Hainmueller, and Hangartner (2016) and Czymara and Schmidt-Catran (2016) using a representative sample and points to an important interaction effect in public opinion formation toward asylum seekers: economic threat only gets activated when refugees' deservingness is in doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the topic of Nazism and religion in a new way, by considering the official explanations that were offered to party members and the German public in the two commentaries on the Nazi Program. Through a detailed analysis of these commentaries and the origins of the program, it is argued that the official Nazi position on religion has to be understood principally as anti-Jewish. The paper proposes a redefinition of the terms of debate to "ethnotheism" or religion defined by race, and the perceived moral or spiritual characteristics that the Nazis believed to be inherent in race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large influx of refugees into Germany in late 2015 gave rise to a period of intensified party competition over a single issue: refugees. This paper examines German parties’ reactions to this issue suddenly becoming highly important and voter preferences shifting to a more restrictive stance. It does so by analysing the parties’ positions on the issue from August to November 2015 based on statements from more than 1000 quality newspaper articles. The analysis shows that there was no uniform shift in line with the change in public opinion but a pattern of polarisation. Moreover, converging party position changes sparked intra-party criticism that was in turn followed by divergence – a pattern observable for the Green Party as well as for the Christian Democrats. Altogether, these findings suggest that policy motives, which induce intra-party dissent, impede parties opportunistically trying to follow shifts in public opinion in the short term. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Public attitudes toward depression and help-seeking behaviour are important factors influencing depressed people to obtain professional help and adequate treatment. OSPI-Europe is a multi-level suicide prevention programme including a public awareness campaign. It was implemented in four regions of four European countries (Germany, Hungary, Ireland and Portugal). This paper reports the results of the evaluation of the campaign, including its visibility and effects of the campaign on stigma associated with depression and help-seeking behaviour.Methods: A representative general population survey (N=4004) including measures on personal stigma, perceived stigma, openness to help, perceived value of help, and socio-demographic variables was conducted in the four intervention and four control regions in a cross-sectional pre-post design.Results: The public awareness campaign was considerably more visible in Germany and Portugal compared to Ireland and Hungary. Visibility was further affected by age and years of schooling. Personal stigma, perceived stigma and openness toward professional help varied significantly across the four countries. Respondents in the intervention regions showed significantly less personal depression stigma than respondents in the control regions after the campaign. Respondents of the intervention region who were aware of the campaign reported more openness toward seeking professional help than respondents who were unaware of it.Conclusion: The OSPI-Europe awareness campaign was visible and produced some positive results. At the same time, it proved to be difficult to show strong, measurable and unambiguous effects, which is in line with previous studies. Public awareness campaigns as conducted within OSPI-Europe can contribute to improved attitudes and knowledge about depression in the general public and produce synergistic effects, in particular when the dissemination of awareness campaign materials is simultaneously reinforced by other intervention levels of a multi-level intervention programme.Limitations: The survey was cross-sectional and based on self-report, so no causal inferences could be drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the impact of organised interests on the passage of legislation in the German Bundestag through an empirical analysis of the position papers presented in the public hearings of its standing committees in 2011. These committees are the most important forums to revise legislative proposals. Drawing on resource dependency theory, we employ GLM regression analyses to study if interest groups act as change agents that bring legislation closer to their own policy preferences. Controlling for institutional and bill characteristics, we discuss two major findings that shed light on the role of interest groups in legislation. First, business groups' opposition to government bills triggers legislative changes because their members control the means of production and make investment decisions. In contrast, fundamental opposition of non-business groups has no impact. Second, bills debated and opposed by a greater number of interest groups undergo more changes pointing to the importance of the density of interest groups and balance of opinions on a proposal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since voters are often swayed more by the charisma, personal image and communication skills of the individual candidates standing for election than by the parties' political manifestos, they may cast votes that are actually in opposition to their policy preferences. Such a type of behavior, known as 'irrational voting', results in the election of representatives who do not correspond exactly to the voters' own views. To illustrate this, we consider the 28 German parties that took part in the 2013 Bundestag (federal) election and compare their positions on 36 topical issues with the results of public opinion polls. Then we construct the party and coalition indices of popularity (the average percentage of the population represented) and universality (frequency in representing a majority). In particular, we find that the 2013 election winner, the conservative union CDU/CSU with their 41.5 % of the votes, was the least representative among the 28 parties considered. The representativeness of the Bundestag is about 50 %, as if the correspondence with the electorate's preference on every policy issue had been decided by tossing a coin, meaning that the Bundestag's policy profile is independent of that of the electorate. The next paper, 'An election method to improve policy representation of a parliament' (Tangian 2016), suggests a possible way to surmount the problems revealed by our analysis. An alternative election procedure is proposed and hypothetically applied to the 2013 Bundestag, producing a considerable gain in its representativeness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy sector continues to undergo substantial structural changes. Currently, the expansion of renewable energy sources and the decentralisation of energy supply lead to new players entering the market who pursue different objectives and have different preferences. Thus, multiple and usually conflicting targets need to be considered. Moreover, recent public reactions towards infrastructure projects highlight the importance of considering public acceptance as a key dimension of decision making in the energy sector. As a result, decision processes grow more complex at all levels from political to strategic, tactical and operational decisions in companies. We therefore present an approach combining power systems analysis considering grid constraints and multi-criteria decision analysis. The approach focusses on multi-dimensional sensitivity analyses allowing for simultaneous variations of the different preference parameters determined within the decision analysis aimed at facilitating preference elicitation and consensus building in group decisions. The focus of the paper is the demonstration of the presented approach for a power generation and transmission planning case study in the context of the energy transition in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Real-time response (RTR) measurement is an important technique for analyzing human processing of electronic media stimuli. Although it has been demonstrated that RTR data are reliable and internally valid, some argue that they lack external validity. The reason for this is that RTR measurement is restricted to a laboratory environment due to its technical requirements. This paper introduces a smartphone app that 1) captures real-time responses using the dial technique and 2) provides a solution for one of the most important problems in RTR measurement, the (automatic) synchronization of RTR data. In addition, it explores the reliability and validity of mobile RTR measurement by comparing the real-time reactions of two samples of young and welleducated voters to the 2013 German televised debate. Whereas the first sample participated in a classical laboratory study, the second sample was equipped with our mobile RTR system and watched the debate at home. Results indicate that the mobile RTR system yields similar results to the lab-based RTR measurement, providing evidence that laboratory studies using RTR are externally valid. In particular, the argument that the artificial reception situation creates artificial results has to be questioned. In addition, we conclude that RTR measurement outside the lab is possible. Hence, mobile RTR opens the door for large-scale studies to better understand the processing and impact of electronic media content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Injecting sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere could quickly offset global warming caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Because the technology would have global side effects, it raises not only technological but also political, ethical, and social concerns. Therefore, research on sulfate injection should be accompanied by a global debate that incorporates public perceptions and concerns into the development and governance of the technology. Our paper provides insight into public perceptions and explores their underlying patterns using a survey conducted in Germany. The data reveal a differentiated picture. Laboratory research on sulfate injection is broadly approved, whereas field research is much less approved. Immediate deployment is largely rejected. The acceptance of the technology is associated with the belief that climate change is a serious problem and that humans will eventually be able to control nature. It is also determined by the levels of trust in scientists and firms. Among the strongest objections against the technology is the belief that humans should not manipulate nature in the way injecting sulfate would. The actual public perceptions of sulfate injection will, however, evolve along with the ongoing debate between the public, experts, and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]