Immigration, Welfare, and Public Support: Evidence from a Field and Survey Experiment in Denmark

How does immigration shape public support for redistribution, and do reactions to immigrant-targeted welfare policies differ across contexts? We investigate these questions with a field experiment in the greater Copenhagen area. Shoppers exiting supermarkets were invited to sign a political petition, randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) a general increase in welfare benefits, (2) equalizing benefits between immigrants and long-term residents. Within each petition, we further randomized whether the “typical welfare recipients” depicted in petition materials had a migration background or not. To examine contextual heterogeneity, we link experimental data to neighborhood characteristics from Statistics Denmark. In parallel, we conducted a survey experiment with an identical treatment structure, enabling direct comparison of behavioral responses in the field and attitudinal responses in a controlled setting. Together, these studies provide new causal evidence on how ethnic boundaries and immigrant-specific policy frames condition support for redistribution, and how responses differ between survey and field contexts.