Knowing Versus Feeling as Factors in Willingness to Provide Information to the Census

Abstract

The Census Bureau's publicity campaigns assume that cooperation with the census depends on knowledge of how census data are used in the aggregate (e.g., legislative apportionment and revenue sharing) and that they are not used at the individual level (i.e., identifying information is kept confidential by law). This article compares knowledge about these matters with feelings about the census as correlates of willingness to cooperate with a new census request—disclosing one's Social Security number to facilitate data sharing (a proposed way of stemming the census's skyrocketing costs and declining coverage). Results from a 1996 nationwide survey show that compared with feelings, knowledge about census uses is less strongly related to reported willingness to provide one's Social Security number. Similarly, whereas knowledge about census confidentiality taken by itself fails to predict willingness to provide one's number, knowledge in conjunction with feelings clearly succeeds. Thus affect appears more central than knowledge in understanding an important aspect of cooperation with the census.