Corrective Information and Public Opinion About Trade Agreements

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is currently under negotiation between the United States (US) and the European Union (EU). While the agreement is enthusiastically praised by many politicians and most economists, the general public on both sides of the Atlantic perceives the planned agreement as a potential threat to the natural environment, public health, governmental sovereignty and thus to democratic legitimacy in general. Picking up these negative sentiments concerning TTIP, various civil society actors try to mobilize citizens by painting a gloomy picture of the adverse effects of TTIP. While some of these concerns are justified, other concerns lack a fundamental scientific basis. Nevertheless, these misperceptions seem to persist and therefore confront policy makers with the challenge of how to increase public acceptance of a policy, which is surrounded by false beliefs. In this paper, we aim to understand whether and if so how these false beliefs in the context of trade regulation could be altered. More precisely, we strive to answer the question whether and how corrective information about a controversial topic influences individual level opinion about the respective topic. Relying on survey experiments in Germany, the UK and the US, this paper identifies under which circumstances corrective information can lead to belief updates and when individuals rather react with fact avoidance or even with so-called informational backfire effects.