Meta-Reanalysis of Conjoint Experiments on Immigration

Over the last decade, a prominent experimental method---the conjoint design---has been used widely by migration scholars to understand how immigrant characteristics shape individual attitudes toward them. We collate replication files for all published and unpublished conjoint experiments where participants are asked to rate or choose between hypothetical immigrant profiles with randomized attributes. We review 71 studies spanning 1,181,338 immigrant profiles with 21 attributes, evaluated by 112,100 survey respondents from 32 countries. Meta-analyses reinforce well-established findings: sociotropic economic concerns, cultural threats, humanitarian considerations, and procedural factors all influence evaluations. Moreover, we move beyond past work in two important ways. First, we find surprisingly little evidence of cross-attribute heterogeneity, suggesting conjoint experiments may not be particularly well-suited for understanding if and how individuals base their preferences on specific attribute combinations. Second, we demonstrate people greatly differ in their decision-making depending on their priors on immigration: anti-immigrant respondents prioritize cultural similarity to a greater extent than pro-immigrant respondents, who tend to be more favorable toward refugees and immigrants from non-Western, non-Christian, and developing countries. Thus, in addition to synthesizing an extensive and influential literature, this meta-reanalysis sheds new light by explaining discordant findings and identifying areas for future research.