Population Aging and Citizen Preferences for Automation and Immigration: A Cautionary Tale for Advanced Aging Economies?

Extensive research highlights public apprehension toward immigrants and robots, but few studies examine how demographic challenges, particularly population aging, influence these perceptions. The public may not naturally consider population aging when evaluating immigration or automation policies, as these issues are often discussed in silos. We thus hypothesize that priming the public to consider population aging will lead them to view automation and immigration more favorably. Using pre‐registered survey experiments in three countries—Japan, South Korea, and France—we investigate whether providing factual information about population aging alters attitudes toward immigration and automation. We find that in Japan, the world's most aged country, such information generates more favorable attitudes toward both immigration and automation. In Korea, the fastest‐aging country, it improves only immigration attitudes. In France, where the elderly population is average for the EU, we find no significant effect. We find, however, that these positive effects in Japan and Korea do not persist when respondents consider automation and immigration policies alongside other options like adjusting the retirement age. These findings suggest that the public's policy preferences in response to population aging are subject to country‐specific contexts, as well as to different issue linkages activated in policy discussions.