How Policy Design Affects Perceptions of Beneficiaries and Support for Welfare

Abstract

Most of the public supports welfare policies in the abstract, but many hold deep misgivings about the deservingness of welfare recipients, driving down support for specific policies. Welfare policies are often designed to mitigate these concerns by restricting access to benefits, but it is unclear to what effect. According to an influential strain of research drawing on social construction theory, these restrictions may backfire, instead increasing concerns about a free-riding public. In contrast -- drawing on psychological research on the deservingness heuristic -- I argue that policy features, such as work requirements, signal effort on behalf of recipients and thus deservingness. Using an experiment, I find that several policy features increase perceptions of deservingness and, in turn, increase policy support and generosity. However, some policy features are also perceived as overly burdensome, reducing the effects on policy support. Treatment effects on perceptions of beneficiary deservingness are largest among ambivalent respondents, but largely generalize across partisanship, ideology, and racial resentment. Overall, these findings help clarify the implications of the deservingness heuristic while challenging predictions from social construction theory and informing ongoing debates over public opinion and policy feedback.