Presenter: Emilee Matheson
Authors: Emilee Matheson, Elizabeth Bickmore, Criss Levin, Jess Lucero
Faculty Advisor: Josh Smith
Institution: Utah State University
Despite well-documented potential economic and social gains from immigration, US immigration policy strictly limits immigration flows. This divergence between policy and research findings may be driven by negative individual attitudes toward immigration. Factors such as age, education level, political ideology, religion, and exposure to immigrants have all been shown to impact an individual’s preference on immigration policy. Other theories, such as the labor market hypothesis or the fiscal burden hypothesis, point to the perceived economic threats of immigration as a leading cause of anti-immigration sentiment. Our paper focuses on risk orientation, a trait that determines an individual’s choice between perceived trade-off of risk and return, as a potential determinant of immigration opinion. We hypothesized that individuals who are risk-averse, those who are more concerned over the potential for loss than motivated by the potential for gain, would be more likely to prefer restrictive immigration policy than their risk-acceptant peers. Evidence supporting or undermining this hypothesis has the potential to aid policymakers in understanding what drives beliefs about immigrants. By framing immigration policy in a way that mitigates risk, more risk-averse individuals may be willing to accept evidence-based policy.