Expecting equality or efficiency? A factorial survey on the justice perception of regional redistributive policies

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses when the German public perceives the impacts of redistributive place-based policies as more just. Using a factorial survey, we experimentally vary recipient regions and the corresponding funding impacts for the overall state. The results show that strong absolute improvements in economy and living conditions in the whole state lead to significantly higher justice ratings of the hypothetical policy measure. Furthermore, the reduction of state-wide inequality leads to a significant increase in justice ratings, but only when living conditions are affected. Our results indicate that respondents want regional policy measures that provide equal access to public infrastructure for all regions and only target the economy if it promises lasting growth.

KEYWORDS:

• regional redistribution
• equality
• justice attitudes
• living conditions
• factorial survey experiment
• place-based policies

JEL:

• A14
• D63
• R1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This paper was presented at the Conference on Regional Inequalities 2018 in Marburg, Germany. We appreciated the comments of the participants with gratitude. We also thank the editors and two anonymous reviewers whose comments substantially improved this paper.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The term ‘equity’ could be understood ambiguously. The literature often uses the term ‘regional equity’ or ‘spatial equity’ in a sense of equality between regions. However, equity-theory means the equity of inputs and outputs and does not argue in favour of equity between regions.

2. Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland in der im Bundesgesetzblatt Teil III, Gliederungsnummer 100-1, veröffentlichten bereinigten Fassung, zuletzt geändert durch Art. 1 des Gesetzes vom 13. Juli 2017 (BGBl. I S. 2347).

3. We use data from the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR).

4. Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, Consolidated Version 26.10.2012. Official Journal of the European Union, C 326, 47-390.

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge the Volkswagen Foundation for funding our project [grant number 89472].