Housing wealth, information, and political efficacy

Conference item

It has long been established that education and income affect people’s political efficacy. Surprisingly, the role of wealth has been largely neglected in this literature. In this paper, we argue that housing wealth performs an insurance function and is thereby associated with higher internal and external po- litical efficacy. Using data from the UKHLS and a representative survey including an experiment that was administered in England and Wales, we document a sizeable and statistically significant positive association of housing wealth and perceived wealth with efficacy. However, this relationship is less ro- bust to sample attrition than between efficacy and education or income. We furthermore investigate whether informing respondents about house price inequality affects their efficacy. Our information treat- ments show no effect on external efficacy, while the effect on internal efficacy depends on the respondent correctly understanding the information: comprehenders show higher efficacy and non-comprehenders exhibit lower efficacy, compared to the control group. This suggests that views of government responsive- ness (external efficacy) are not easily manipulated, while for people’s view of their own understanding of politics (internal efficacy), comprehension matters more than content of the information treatment, in accordance with self-efficacy theory.

Authors: Haslberger, M; Elkjaer, M; Ansell, B

• Publication status: Not published
• Publisher: European Political Science Association
• Host title: Proceedings of the 12th European Political Science Association Annual Conference (EPSA 2022)
• Acceptance date: 2022-03-25
• Event title: European Political Science Association Annual Conference
• Event location: Prague, Czechia
• Event website: https://epsanet.org/epsa-2022-program/
• Event start date: 2022-06-23
• Event end date: 2022-06-25
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR