Global Attitudes Survey Research Articles

An Exploration of China’s Image Perception, Influencing Factors and Communication Strategies from a Latin American Perspective — An Empirical Study Based on the 2001–2023 Latin American Barometer

The world is undergoing a great change that has not been seen in a 100 years, and the international situation and international pattern are changing profoundly. In order to promote China’s “going out” and explore China–Latin America relationship to build a better national image, this paper, based on the 2001–2023 Latin American Barometer, 2001–2023 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, China Knowledge Network database and 2001–2023 Chinese government website’s reports on Latin America, government website’s reports on Latin America and Africa, tries to discuss Latin American people’s perceptions of China’s national image. This study mainly used Octopus, SPSS and other tools to crawl and analyze the data. The study found that there is a correlation between China’s national image and its national image.

From Bush to Biden: British public opinion and the image of America

The scholarly literature on US–UK relations has been marked by recurrent debate over the health and utility of the special relationship, recently enlivened by the policy tensions and political turbulence of the Trump presidency. The literature has also seen a social and cultural ‘turn’, with a growing focus on the broader linkages between the two countries’ societies and cultures. However, there has been limited analysis of public opinion in Britain in recent scholarly research. This article examines the ‘image of America’ in British public opinion in the twenty-first century, across recent Republican and Democratic presidencies. It uses data from the annual Pew Global Attitudes survey series and Transatlantic Trends survey series to undertake systematic analysis of these quantitative data sources. It examines the following areas: the performance and policies of presidents from Bush to Biden, the US and its people, the state of bilateral relations, and NATO. It examines aggregate-level opinion and also pays close attention to views across different societal groups, based on demographic characteristics, party support and left–right ideology. The paper makes a significant and distinctive contribution to scholarly research into US–UK relations.

Religiosity and Political Islam: Divergent Influences on Support for Terrorism

AbstractThis study examines the intricate relationship between religion and attitudes towards terrorist violence, with a specific focus on individual sympathy for al-Qaeda and justification for suicide bombings. While religion has the capacity to promote both harmony and social cohesion, as well as division and conflict, it is crucial to explore the complex and contradictory nature of religious beliefs in relation to individuals’ attitudes towards terrorism. To address this paradox, the study differentiates between religion as a belief and religion as an ideology. Drawing from a subset of the 2011 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, encompassing countries with substantial Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey), the research investigates how religiosity and political Islam influence public attitudes towards terrorism, considering political and economic grievances in these contexts. Multivariate statistical analysis suggests that religiosity and political Islam exhibit distinct associations with the justification of suicide bombings and support for al-Qaeda, and these dynamics vary across countries. Ultimately, the study underscores the importance of perceiving religiosity not as a threat but as a potential remedy to prevent extremism by fostering an educated and deeper understanding of religious principles.

European Integration Processes in EECCA: Dependencies and Drivers

The study was conducted using comparative quantitative and qualitative analysis of World Bank and International Monetary Fund data for 1989-2020 and 2000-2020. Two-factor linear econometric models of economic growth in 11 countries of Central and Eastern Europe (depending on their exports and debt) were built on the basis of such analysis. The study also relied on data from the Pew Research Center's Spring 2019 Global Attitudes Survey regarding EU citizens’ attitudes toward integration. The research findings were used to examine the causes and consequences of European integration for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Since 2004, when the first wave of EU enlargement took place, the combined weight of the economies of Central and Eastern Europe in relation to the EU has increased from 6.7% to 10.8% in 2020. On the other hand, none of the countries that have joined the EU have reached Europe-wide labor productivity. Assessment of the possible accession of other countries of the former eastern bloc revealed that Kazakhstan, where productivity in 2020 reached 58.4% of the average achieved in the EU, has the most enabling economic environment. In this context, Kazakhstan outperformed Bulgaria, where such a parameter amounted to 53.5%. During 1995-2000, the multiple of the ratio between the minimum and maximum levels of per capita GDP in the group of countries under study ranged from 6.3 to 7.7 times. Fifteen years after the first wave of accession to the EU, this figure has decreased to 2.5 times. Proposals to reduce regional economic inequality based on the econometric models have been developed.

Assessing the relationship between terrorist attacks against ingroup or outgroup members and public support for terrorism.

Terrorist groups rely on constituency support for their long-term survival. Here, we examined the extent to which terrorists’ own activities are related with public opinion on terrorism. Specifically, we assessed whether more frequent and more costly terrorist attacks against the ingroup are associated with war weariness or retaliatory sentiments, thus, either weaker or stronger approval of terrorism. We further investigated if more frequent and costly attacks that target an outgroup predict higher levels of justification of terrorism. Lastly, we identified the timeframe during which domestic and outgroup terrorist attacks correlate with (lower or higher) public support. The analyses focused on Jordan (ingroup) and Israel (outgroup), over an 8-year period (2004–2011), drawing on data from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey and the Global Terrorism Database. Results showed that support for terrorism in Jordan decreased in 2005 and, again, in 2008. The frequency of terrorist attacks and fatality/injury rates in Jordan did not vary significantly during the study period. The number of attacks and fatalities/people injured in Israel, however, changed between 2004 and 2011. Cross-correlations of the time-series further demonstrated that the number of attacks and fatalities/people injured in Jordan was not related with the level of public approval of terrorism in the country. Importantly, and in line with the literature, the casualty rate in Israel was positively associated with support for terrorism in Jordan, in the next year. That is, there is evidence that more/less costly terrorist attacks on an outgroup can predict stronger/weaker public support for the tactic relatively quickly. Those findings provide insights for counter-terrorism measures.

Education and Trade Attitudes: Revisiting the Role of Economic Interest

AbstractWhy are highly educated people more supportive of international trade? Two competing explanations exist for this empirical finding. On the one hand, the economic interest approach suggests that the highly educated realize that trade can benefit them economically. On the other hand, the ideational perspective argues that this relationship arises because highly educated people are more cosmopolitan, and cosmopolitanism is positively related to support for trade. To contribute to this debate on the education–trade attitude nexus, we present and empirically test four hypotheses. Using data from the PEW Global Attitudes survey (2014) for 36 countries at various levels of development, we find that as expected by the economic interest approach, the effect of education on people's perceptions of the consequences of trade is conditional on respondents’ individual and subnational economic context. The results thus show that economic interest at least partly explains education's effects on public opinion towards trade. Beyond adding to this specific debate, the research note makes several broader contributions to research on trade and public opinion.

Trade and Attitude Towards the EU: What Really Matters

The main goal of this article is to identify which aspect of trade drives positive attitudes towards the trading partner country. Whereas research has shown a positive influence of trade already, it is not clear whether total trade, trade balance, exports or imports is the best variable to predict attitudes. Furthermore, we investigate whether different sorts of the traded good do impact attitudes differently. As attitudes are formed on an individual level, we estimate that goods whose origins are visible to the individual customer do have greater impact than goods with no visible origins. In our analysis we use data from the Global Attitudes Survey from the Pew Research Center to measure attitudes towards the European Union (EU) and data from UN Comtrade to measure trade with the EU. Our results show that imports from and total trade with correlate significantly with attitude towards the EU, whereas exports to the EU and the bilateral trade balance do not. Given that imports are a part of total trade, we argue that imports are the best variable to predict attitudes. Additionally, we found that it is the import of differentiated goods that impacts attitudes whereas the import of homogeneous goods does not. We argue therefore that positive attitudes towards a trading partner are driven by individual experiences of consumers with products from the respective countries. Trade, Attitude, Soft Power, Exports, Peace

Asian views of China in the age of China’s rise: interpreting the results of pew survey and Asian student survey in chronological and comparative perspectives, 2002-2019

ABSTRACT In order to see how Asian countries in this special volume (Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia) are looking at China in chronological and comparative perspectives, using Global Attitudes Survey data conducted by Pew Research Center would be the best way because they cover the data from 2002 to 2019 as of now. We can get a lot of insights on different views of the rise of China in Asia through the analysis of Pew Research Center’s Global Attitudes Survey data, but there are some inconveniences. Some data in Asian countries are lacking, and the timing of survey is different from one country to another, which makes it difficult to compare the results across the countries. In order to overcome such limitations, this paper uses the second wave and third wave data of Asian Student Survey. Main findings of the analysis are as follows. As of 2018, Singapore and Indonesia were comparatively positively viewing the influence of China, while Vietnam was viewing it negatively, and Japan and South Korea were in-between. The changes in these five years, however, were different from country to country. Changing views of Chinese toward Asian countries were basically symmetrical to those of Asian countries toward China. In these surveyed countries, “peaceful rise frame” was the most powerful determinant of the views of China, which explains why views of China were worsening in these countries. But the concrete determinants of the views were different from one country to another.

Together or Not? Dynamics of Public Attitudes on UN and NATO

This study investigates the driving forces of public endorsement of two major intergovernmental organizations—the UN and NATO. More specifically, I scrutinize the effects of two sets of independent variables on individual support for security intergovernmental organizations: respondents’ subjective evaluation of the domestic economic conditions and the gap between the home country’s foreign policy preferences and the mean preference within the said intergovernmental organization. For the empirical analysis, I employ cross-sectional survey data acquired from Pew Global Attitudes Surveys covering a sample of 37 countries and 10 waves spanning 2007–2017. The statistical analyses lend strong support for both hypotheses. Specifically, citizens who are dissatisfied with the national economic conditions are less likely to be in favor of intergovernmental organizations. The negative correlation between the perceptions of domestic economic performance and attitudes toward intergovernmental organizations is particularly compelling in countries that contribute more to the budget of that intergovernmental organization. Second, in countries where the foreign policy preferences converge with the other members of an intergovernmental organization, public opinion is more favorably disposed toward that intergovernmental organization.

Public attitudes towards climate change: A cross-country analysis

Addressing climate change requires international effort from both governments and the public. Climate change concern is a crucial variable influencing public support for measures to address climate change. Combining country-level data with data from the Pew Research Center Spring 2015 Global Attitudes Survey, we test whether perceived threats from climate change influence climate change concern. We distinguish between personal threat and planetary threat and we find that both threats have substantive effects on climate change concern, with personal threat exerting a greater influence on climate change concern than planetary threat. The effects of both types of threats are also moderated by Gross Domestic Product per capita, such that threats have stronger effects on climate change concern in high-income countries than in low-income countries. Our findings contribute to the existing literature and open up new debates concerning the role of threats in climate change concern and have implications for climate change communication.

Determinants of Support for Climate Change Efforts in the Global South

This paper addresses determinants that underpin support for climate change efforts. The study is based on Pew Research Center (USA), Spring 2015 Global Attitudes survey dataset, with a primary focus on climate change, collected from March 25 to May 27, 2015. Drawing on the new ecological paradigm and ecological modernization perspectives, the paper utilizing logistic regression, examines the relationship between individuals’ perception or awareness of the severity of climate change and their support for limiting greenhouse emissions; the extent to which individuals’ views on whether developing countries should do as much as the rich countries in addressing climate change predict the likelihood of their (individuals’) support for limiting greenhouse emissions. The logistic regression models reveal that people’s rational insight into the following consequences of climate change positively predicts support for limiting greenhouse emissions: severe weather like floods or severe storms; long periods of unusually hot weather; rising sea levels; years of schooling and age positively predict support for limiting greenhouse emissions. In general, knowing an individual’s country of residence offers no predictive value in determining whether the individual will support limiting greenhouse emissions. The notable exceptions are: South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. These four countries display positive and statistically significant coefficients in the logistic regression model predicting support for greenhouse emissions. Keywords: climate change; environmental concern; greenhouse emissions; ecological crisis; Africa

Social standards in trade agreements and free trade preferences: An empirical investigation

Free trade generates macroeconomic gains but also creates winners and losers. Historically, to reconcile this tension, governments compensated globalization losers with social spending in exchange for support for free trade, known as the embedded liberalism compromise. In the neoliberal era, what other policies can governments pursue to strengthen support for globalization? We assess the effect of social standards in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) on individual preferences for free trade. We analyze data from an original survey experiment and find that respondents in advanced industrialized countries have greater support for free trade when PTAs include social standards. Differences do exist in how these social standards are perceived: while we do find evidence of an embedded liberalism compromise recast, fair trade norms have the most salience. An external validity check using the PEW global attitudes survey confirms the hypothesis. Our analysis has serious implications for the legitimacy of the global trading system suffering from neo-mercantilist creep.

Attitudes Toward Homosexuality and Perceptions of the United States Abroad*

ObjectiveThis article examines the determinants of perceptions of the United States and of President Obama among global citizens.MethodsThe 2013 Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes surveys covering countries from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, and Africa with diverse socioeconomic and religious backgrounds are analyzed by using multilevel estimates.ResultsFindings reveal that attitudes toward homosexuality systematically shape opinions toward the United States and toward Obama's handling of foreign affairs. We also find the significant impact of religious and economic variables on perceptions of the United States and of Obama above and beyond other explanatory variables.ConclusionThis research demonstrates the relevance of cleavages regarding social values. It also contributes to larger debates about sources of anti‐Americanism, and, more generally, about the role of ideology and social values in international relations.

Cross-national variation in determinants of climate change concern

ABSTRACTOur understanding of the determinants of public concern about climate change relies heavily on survey research in the United States. But can those findings be generalized to the rest of the world? Analysis of the Pew Research Center’s 2015 Global Attitudes Survey shows fairly similar patterns in the English-speaking Western democracies and, to a lesser extent, western Europe, but party identification and political ideology matter much less in most of the globe, and demographic factors have very different impacts. Female, younger, and less religious people tend to worry more about climate change in English-speaking Western democracies. In most of the world, however, concern is only weakly correlated with gender, rises with age and religiosity, and is more strongly correlated with education. A new measure of commitment to democratic values proved to be the most consistent predictor of concern globally.

World Society Divided: Divergent Trends in State Responses to Sexual Minorities and Their Reflection in Public Attitudes

This paper extends existing world society literature on the international diffusion of norms by examining divergence in world society. First, we identify polarizing trends in national regulation of homosexuality. Since 2005, the dominant post-WWII global trend toward liberalization has been challenged by a countervailing trend in which some countries have adopted more repressive laws regulating homosexuality. Second, we seek to identify whether states’ alignment with either liberal or conservative world models influences public opinion. Analyzing three waves of data on public acceptance of homosexuality from the Pew Global Attitudes Survey between 2002 and 2013, we find that world public opinion concerning homosexuality has become increasingly polarized and that public opinion is embedded in broader institutional structures. Characteristics including education, age, and religious affiliation (and the lack of thereof) also affect individual acceptance of homosexuality, whereas the influence of age and education has diminished over time.

State Toleration of a New Faith in Post-Soviet Society: A Case Study of Latter-day Saints in Independent Ukraine

This study combines author's experiences as an analyst of post-Soviet politics and religious liberty with personal participation in the founding and public acceptance of a new faith in independent Ukraine during a quarter- century (1). Theattempt here is not only to describe a specific outcome, but to propose factors that offer explanation for why Ukraine is among the few Communist successor states in which new minority faiths have been relatively successful in achieving full toleration [Biddulph: 2016].
 Religious liberty has been described as the “first freedom of all freedoms” [Hertzke: 2013, 4], yet it has been noticeably unachieved globally. A 2007 Pew “Global Attitudes Survey” showed that 90% of respondents world-wide said that it was important to live in a country that enabled them to practice religion freely. 
 Yet a more recent Pew “Forum on Global Restrictions on Religion” found that 70% of the world population reside in countries which have high or very high restrictions on religion either from government actions or from major social hostilities [Grim: 2013 , 86]. Religious liberty, therefore, is an almost universal human aspiration, but is one of the more unachieved rights in the world. The Soviet Union successor states have a similar record of lower achievement [Lunkin: 2013; Grim: 2013].

Another Story: What Public Opinion Data Tell Us about Refugee and Humanitarian Policy

The global reaction to US President Donald Trump's executive order, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States” of January 27, 2017,1 revealed great public sympathy for the fate of refugees and the principle of refugee protection. In the case of Europe, such sympathy has, however, been dismissed by politicians who have read concerns regarding security and integration as reason for introducing restrictive policies on asylum and humanitarian assistance. These policies are at odds with public sentiment. Drawing upon public opinion surveys conducted by Amnesty International, the European Social Survey (ESS), and Pew Global Attitudes Survey across the European Union and neighboring states, this article records a marked divide between public attitudes towards the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers and official policies regarding asylum and humanitarian assistance, and seeks to understand why this is the case. The article suggests that post-9/11 there has been a reconfiguration of refugee policy and a reconnecting of humanitarian and security interests which has enabled a discourse antithetical to the universal right to asylum. It offers five possible explanations for this trend: i) fears over cultural antagonism in host countries; ii) the conflation of refugees and immigrants, both those deemed economically advantageous as well as those labelled as “illegal”; iii) dominance of human capital thinking; iv) foreign policy justification; and v) the normalization of border controls. The main conclusion is that in a post-post-Cold War era characterized in part by the reconnecting of security and humanitarian policy, European governments have developed restrictive policies despite public sympathy. Support for the admission of refugees is not, however, unqualified, and most states and European populations prefer skilled populations that can be easily assimilated. In order to achieve greater protection and more open policies, this article recommends human rights actors work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partners to challenge the above discourse through media campaigns and grassroots messaging. Further recommendations include: • Challenging efforts to normalize and drawing attention to the extreme and unprecedented activities of illegal and inhumane practices, e.g., detention, offshore processing, and the separation of families through the courts as part of a coordinated information campaign to present a counter moral argument. • Identifying how restrictive asylum policies fail to advance foreign policy interests and are contrary to international law. • Evidencing persecution by sharing information with the press and government agencies on the nature of claims by those currently considered ineligible for refugee protection as part of a wider campaign of information and inclusion. • Engaging with minority, and in particular Muslim, communities to redress public concerns regarding the possibility of cultural integration in the host country. • Clarifying the rights of refugees and migrants in line with the UNHCR and International Organization for Migration (IOM) guidelines and European and national law in order to hold governments to account and to ensure that all — irrespective of their skills, status, nationality or religion — are given the opportunity to seek asylum. • Identifying and promoting leadership among states and regional bodies to advance the rights of refugees.

Who Favors al-Qaeda? Anti-Americanism, Religious Outlooks, and Favorable Attitudes toward Terrorist Organizations

This study examines why ordinary people sympathize with a terrorist network in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Holding literalist religious outlook resonating with al-Qaeda’s marginal interpretation of Islam constant, it is maintained that anti-Americanism and its varieties matter a great deal in explaining attitudes toward al-Qaeda. Using Pew Global Attitudes Surveys conducted in Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, the authors run conditional mixed process estimations combining seemingly unrelated regressions with selection models to account for the missing values and endogeneity problems. The analysis reveals significant variation both cross-nationally and in the effects of varieties of anti-Americanism on favorability of al-Qaeda. While the dislike of certain aspects of American culture generates sympathy toward al-Qaeda, anti-Americanism as a general attitude does not. More interestingly, dislike of American democracy, technology, and policy has either negative or no effect on favorable views of al-Qaeda. Literalist religious outlook generates positive views of al-Qaeda, but religiosity has a negative impact. These findings imply that we need to draw careful distinctions between politicized Islamic preferences and personal religiosity as well as the different types of anti-American sentiments in understanding Muslim political attitudes about terrorist groups.

Global liberalization on homosexuality: Explaining the African gap

We are trapped in two divergent worlds when it comes to global views on homosexuality. There is the liberal world epitomized by Spain and other nations, where homosexuality is increasingly accepted; gays and lesbians are claiming their human rights; and laws are changing to codify that transformation. The second is the extremely anti-gay world symbolized by Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia, where attitudes are favorable to criminalization. This research explains the “African Gap” in attitudes toward homosexuality in a comparative analysis of six African nations and Argentina and Canada, South and North America's most liberal nations on gay rights. Using Pew's 2015 Spring Global Attitudes Survey data, we find that the major variables have essentially similar effects on opinion in any context. Africa's distinction is explained by its comparatively higher levels of factors such as religion, morality dogma, and low socioeconomic status that generally retard support for homosexuality, at the same time of lower levels of factors such as education, urbanization, and personal liberty that increase gay support. Africa's extreme anti-gay outlook is mutable. Two social forces will facilitate this softening: expansion of liberalizing agents such as education and urbanization, and repositioning away from “traditionalism” toward modernism emphasizing individualism, civil rights, and personal liberties.

The 'Euromaidan,' Democracy, and Political Values in Ukraine

This paper examines the political system, attitudes towards democracy, and their determinants in Ukraine before, during and after the “Euromaidan.” The research question is as follows: What type of political system has emerged in Ukraine since the “Euromaidan?” The related research question is to what extent political values in Ukraine are supportive of democracy. This study is based on theories of democratic, semi-democratic, and authoritarian political systems, democratization, and political culture. A number of major survey-based academic studies, conducted primarily before the “Orange Revolution,” concluded that mass political values in Ukraine were generally supportive of democracy, and that they did not preclude emergence of a consolidated democracy. Many previous studies presented the “Orange Revolution” as a democratic revolution that transformed Ukraine from semi-democracy or competitive authoritarianism to democracy. Democracy was often regarded as the most likely future path of political development of this post-Soviet state. The Western and Ukrainian media, the Western governments, and the Maidan government in Ukraine also generally presented the “Euromaidan” as a democratic revolution that overthrew the authoritarian government as a result of mass peaceful protests. However, there is lack of academic studies of the political system and democratic values in Ukraine since the “Euromaidan.” This paper compares political systems in Ukraine before, during and after the “Euromaidan.” It uses data from different waves of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems surveys, the Pew Global Attitudes surveys, and the World Values Surveys to examine public attitudes towards democracy in Ukraine before and after the “Euromaidan.” It also compares democratic and authoritarian preferences in Ukraine with those in Poland and Russia, two similar post-communist countries with differing political cultures and divergent trajectories of democratization. Finally, this study implements multiple regression analysis of the determinants of attitudes towards democracy. It analyzes effects of political party preferences, regional historical legacies, religion, ethnicity, and other factors on pro-democracy views. The study also discusses implications of its findings for the prospects for liberal democracy in Ukraine and for the conflict between the West and Russia over Ukraine.