Pre-Analysis Plan: Uncertainty, Trust, and (In)Consistent Public Signals: Evidence from the COVID-19 vaccination programme

Governments often change their policy recommendations on issues that are uncertain. How do voters react to recommendations in these situations? In particular, how effective are these messages in changing citizens beliefs and what is the moderating effect of trust in the sender. Could governments have the incentive not to report new evidence anticipating a backlash from citizens for inconsistent messages? We investigate these questions using an incentivised online experiment with 9000 German respondents.