This paper investigates public attitudes toward product market regulation (PMR) reforms aimed at fostering private participation and competition in two network sectors—electricity and telecommunications. Despite the benefits of such reforms, including enhanced productivity and lower prices, they often face significant public resistance. We conduct large-scale surveys of 6,300 individuals in three emerging market and developing economies (Mexico, Morocco, and South Africa) to analyze the role of socioeconomic characteristics, beliefs, and perceptions in shaping support for PMR reforms. Our findings reveal that individual beliefs and perceptions, particularly those related to how policies work and market economy views, are major predictors of reform support. Randomized information treatments show that raising awareness about the costs of the status quo and the benefits of PMR reforms significantly increases public support. Among initially skeptical individuals, societal concerns play a larger role in respondents’ reasons for nonsupport, consistent with models of social preferences. However, offering tailored complementary and compensatory measures can further enhance support among those skeptical individuals.
Authors
Silvia Albrizio, Hippolyte W. Balima, Bertrand Gruss, Eric Huang, Colombe Ladreit
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5089/9798400290398.001
- ISBN
- 9798400290398
- ISSN
- 1018-5941
- Issue
- 216
- Pages
- 114
- Published in
- United States of America
- Series
- Working Paper No. 2024/216
- Stock No
- WPIEA2024216
- Volume
- 2024
Table of Contents
- PMR_Open 1
- PMR_Reforms 4
- Introduction 7
- The Survey 12
- Data 12
- Sample 13
- Data Quality 14
- Real-stakes Questions 15
- Questionnaire Structure 16
- What Explains Support for PMR reforms? 18
- Perceptions about the effects of private participation and competition 20
- Predicting policy support: Beliefs and perceptions versus socioeconomic characteristics. 23
- Randomized Information Experiment 27
- The treatments 28
- Effects of the treatments on support for policies 29
- Effects of the treatments on willingness to sign petitions 31
- Uncovering the mechanism: Treatment Effects on policy beliefs 32
- Reasons of Non-Support and Mitigation Policies 34
- Heterogeneity in treatment effects 38
- Country-level heterogeneity 38
- Individual-level heterogeneity: socioeconomic characteristics 39
- Individual-level heterogeneity: beliefs and perceptions 41
- Robustness 42
- Conclusion 46
- References 48
- Appendix 51
- Sample Statistics 51
- Duration 52
- Treatment scripts 53
- Data sources used to design the treatments 58
- Variables definitions 59
- Additional descriptive statistics 65
- Balance Analysis 66
- Additional figures 70
- Who holds positive perceptions about competition? 70
- Role of socioeconomic characteristics and beliefs and perceptions 72
- Characteristics of the ultimate non-supporters for reforms 78
- Additional tables 80
- Questionnaire 84
- Survey links 84
- Benchmark questionnaire 84
- PMR_close 114
