SecEUrity Project: Luxury of Moral Reasoning

The goal of the project is to examine how economic costs and morality influence citizens' attitudes toward offering more aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. In particular, we examine whether moral convictions regarding retribution and European solidarity lose meaning when citizens are made to consider the economic costs of aid to themselves and their country. The project employs a dual strategy of observational and experimental data analysis. Using observational data, we estimate correlations between moral concerns (retribution and European solidarity) and support for offering more aid to Ukraine. In addition, an experimental variation in the measurement of the policy attitude will either frame the aid being associated with low, medium, or high economic costs, or will not provide a frame. The experimental variation is hence targeted at introducing and/or increasing the relevance of cost considerations when respondents evaluate the policy. An additional, secondary experimental component varies the type of aid (military; non-military; [BLANK]). The preregistration specifies hypotheses about 1) the associations between moral concerns and policy attitude, 2) the main effects of cost frames, and 3) about the interaction between moral convictions and treatment effects. Additionally, the preregistration proposes exploratory research questions. The experiment will be embedded in surveys conducted in 9 EU member states and the UK. Data will be collected through an additional wave of an existing panel survey in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom and a cross-sectional survey using fresh samples in Estonia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Hungary. The sample size for the panel survey depends on how many respondents are willing to be re-interviewed; the target sample size of the cross-sectional survey is N=1000 per country.