With the rise of standard contracts, tensions persist between protecting consumers from unfair terms and preserving freedom of contract. A key concern is that consumers may waive legal rights, often unknowingly, particularly when dealing with trusted brands. To address this, we conducted a conjoint experiment with a representative US sample to evaluate how consumers value legal rights—such as warranties, liability, privacy, and conflict resolution—when they are fully aware, understand the terms, and must trade them off against product features like price and brand reputation. Our findings reveal that even when rights can be traded off against other features of the product, consumers value legal rights. Of the legal rights we tested, warranties and price were found to be the most decisive factors in their purchase decisions. Notably, we did not find evidence that brand reputation significantly alters the valuation of legal rights. These insights offer important empirical evidence to enrich the extensive policy debate.

Voter turnout is fundamental for democratic legitimacy, but converting support into ballots has been challenging for politicians. We study the effects of one such policy to increase voter turnout implemented in Poland---a contest for fire trucks in small municipalities---that created a natural experiment. By using a battery of design-based empirical approaches, we document that the policy increased voter turnout in small municipalities, which contributed to the incumbent’s victory in a close presidential election.

This article examines the multifaceted nature of the rule of law. It primarily shows a way to measure how the meaning of the rule of law differs across countries, or across different contexts more generally, by analyzing parliamentary discourse on the rule of law. The findings point to a convergence in the conceptualization of the rule of law across diverse legal traditions despite ex ante differences between common law, French, German, and post-socialist legal traditions. The article also proposes a principled approach for deriving weights for rule-of-law indicators in order to assess the sensitivity of country rankings with respect to the adherence to rule-of-law principles.

This study examines how lay people evaluate pecuniary sanctions when there is a tension between the normative logics underlying the concept of equality. While fixed fines depend primarily on the severity of the offense, income-dependent (day) fines are designed to equalize the financial burden across offenders, raising questions about how proportionality and equality before the law are understood in practice. Using a vignette experiment on a representative sample of 2,400 Dutch participants, we assess fairness perceptions across different offenses, income levels, and information conditions. By using multiple outcome measures, the study captures different ways in which fairness is evaluated, including fairness ratings of imposed sanctions, respondents' own choices of fines, and institutional preferences for a fine model. The findings reveal a systematic divergence across these evaluative contexts. Fixed fines are consistently rated as fairer than day fines, yet respondents adjust fines to the offender's income when determining sanctions themselves. At the institutional level, a majority of respondents prefers income-dependent fines, and exposure to an informational video increases support for such systems. These findings suggest that lay judgments do not follow a single fairness principle but reflect the simultaneous use of equal-treatment and burden-sensitive logics. The study contributes to punishment theory by showing that public understandings of proportionality and equality are shaped by tension between competing normative principles, and has implications for the design and communication of fine systems.

Can targeted local benefits mobilize voters? We study Poland’s 2020 presidential election, when the government awarded fire trucks to small municipalities with the highest turnout. The contest created sharp eligibility and incentive variation: only municipalities below 20,000 inhabitants qualified, and first-round winners were excluded from the second-round competition. Using municipality-level electoral and demographic data and a set of design-based estimators—diÄerence-in-diÄerences, diÄerence-in-discontinuities, regression discontinuity, and nearest-neighbor matching—we show that the contest increased turnout in eligible municipalities by about 1–2 percentage points, especially in very small municipalities, consistent with a model in which the expected return to voting falls with municipality size as both the probability of being pivotal and the per-capita value of the prize decline. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the contest accounted for 12–30 percent of the incumbent’s second-round victory margin. The results show that low-cost, targeted local public-good incentives can mobilize voters and aÄect electoral competition.

Addressing climate change depends on large-scale system changes, which require public advocacy. Here, we identified and tested 17 expert-crowdsourced theory-informed behavioral interventions designed to promote public, political, and financial advocacy in a large quota-matched sample of US residents (n = 31,324). The most consistently effective intervention emphasized both the collective efficacy and emotional benefits of climate action, increasing advocacy by up to 10 percentage points. This was also the top intervention among participants identifying as Democrats. Appealing to binding moral foundations, such as purity and sanctity, was also among the most effective interventions, showing positive effects even among participants identifying as Republicans. These findings provide critical insights to policymakers and practitioners aiming to galvanize the public behind collective action and advocacy on climate change with affordable and scalable interventions.

We examine whether different information frames affect how people perceive the domestic costs of sanctions and support sanctions. Using data from an information provision experiment in Germany and Poland, we demonstrate that people overestimate the costs of sanctions (Gross Domestic Product loss due to an energy embargo) in sending countries. Yet, this perception can be corrected through the provision of actual information, which in turn enhances the support for the sanction. Contrasting sanctions' costs with other costs - Covid-19 costs and costs imposed on target countries - has no additional effect.

The same dataset can be analysed in different justifiable ways to answer the same research question, potentially challenging the robustness of empirical science1-3. In this crowd initiative, we investigated the degree to which research findings in the social and behavioural sciences are contingent on analysts' choices. We examined a stratified random sample of 100 studies published between 2009 and 2018, in which, for one claim per study, at least five reanalysts independently reanalysed the original data. The statistical appropriateness of the reanalyses was assessed in peer evaluations, and the robustness indicators were inspected along a range of research characteristics and study designs. We found that 34% of the independent reanalyses yielded the same result (within a tolerance region of ±0.05 Cohen's d) as the original report; with a four times broader tolerance region, this indicator increased to 57%. Of the reanalyses conducted, 74% reached the same conclusion as the original investigation, 24% yielded no effects or inconclusive results and 2% reported the opposite effect. This exploratory study indicates that the common single-path analyses in social and behavioural research should not be simply assumed to be robust to alternative analyses4. Therefore, we recommend the development and use of practices to explore and communicate this neglected source of uncertainty.

Public understanding of what constitutes interpersonal violence has been the topic of much conceptual debate. In this study, we aim to contribute to this literature by generating empirical insight. We recruit a quota representative sample of the Dutch population ( N = 724) and expose participants to vignettes describing interpersonal conflict. We use a conjoint design to manipulate six features of the vignettes and examine how these impact participants’ willingness to label the incident as violent. Results showed that – in line with ideal victim effects – events involving more vulnerable victims and more blameworthy perpetrators are more likely to be labelled as violence. Further, ‘traditional’ representations of interpersonal violence as events that produce physical injury to the victim, generated high violence ratings. Still, public understanding of interpersonal violence was relatively inclusive – various non-physical confrontations were also considered to be violent.

Proportional representation electoral systems were long argued to increase the share of women, compared with majoritarian systems. However, recent studies provide strong evidence that, usually, less women are elected in open-list proportional representation than in closed-list proportional representation. In this study, we test whether open-list proportional representation is enough to increase the share of women in local legislative bodies. We examine a change from a first-past-the-post to an open-list proportional representation with gender quota in Polish municipality council elections. We exploit an arbitrary population threshold to use the difference-in-discontinuities and regression discontinuity designs and do not find sufficient evidence that this change affected women’s representation. We find little evidence for any effect on higher council fragmentation that could have harmed women’s chances, and, analysing simultaneously held regional elections, we find no effect of the reform on voter behaviour. We also show that women’s representation in Poland has been increasing over the past two decades, regardless of the electoral system changes. Thus, even substantial electoral reforms may have relatively little effect on women’s representation.

The rule of law is a foundational concept of state governance, admired for its ideals but also subject to significant controversy, particularly concerning its precise definition. Given the complexity of this evolving field, both in theory and practice, our article analyzes the existing academic literature on the rule of law. First and foremost, it aims to tackle the research question of what the thematic focus is within the rule of law literature. To accomplish this, the article extracts data from the Web of Science (WoS) and employs a bibliometric analysis that includes topic modeling and network analysis techniques. The article likewise presents a rich description of the field by elucidating its intellectual structure and identifying, among other aspects, key sources, references, and influential authors. This article serves as an invaluable resource for those who are new to the field of the rule of law, providing a concise and comprehensive overview of its complex landscape.

We investigate public support for green investments through a conjoint survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands, focusing on attributes that influence acceptance, i.e., investment type, location, financing mechanisms, and perceived environmental benefits. The results of a conjoint experiment with 1,541 quota-representative Dutch respondents reveal strong preferences for local green investments, especially sustainable farming, financed through public debt rather than immediate taxes, highlighting voters' emphasis on domestic and short-term benefits. These findings underline critical political economic considerations for policymakers, who must strategically design and communicate climate actions that resonate with voter attitudes and priorities.

Judicial transformation may result either from shifts in institutional context (prompting behavioral adjustment among incumbent judges) or changes in the composition of the bench (particularly through court-packing strategies that introduce new appointees). This article examines the case of the Polish Constitutional Court to evaluate which of these mechanisms better accounts for the controversial transformation of the court since late 2015. Drawing on data from constitutional abstract review decisions spanning 2003 to 2023, we analyze the behavior of distinct cohorts of judges. Our findings reveal a marked alignment with government positions following the October 2015 parliamentary elections, especially among judges appointed by the newly elected ruling party. The evidence suggests that the transformation is driven primarily by changes in judicial composition rather than by behavioral adaptation among pre-existing judges.

The nexus between social program preferences and political ideologies has emerged as a pivotal area in contemporary welfare reform and social policy discourse. This study uses a conjoint survey experiment on Poland's most extensive children's allowance social protection program in order to examine the extent to which political leaning affects spending adequacy, spending efficiency, and fiscal sustainability preferences. It shows that in Poland conservative voters favor higher social spending adequacy, while progressive voters prefer more efficient and fiscally sustainable social spending, and that progressive voters are against national discrimination in social benefits, while conservative voters are indifferent to it. This paper provides valuable insights into Polish preferences for social protection programs and illustrates how political ideologies are associated with public support for welfare policies.

Shifting realities in the rules-based order threaten the efficacy of refugee law. State-directed assaults may weaken legal mechanisms, with the consequence that hosting humanitarian migrants could fall disproportionately on voter support for particular waves of asylum seekers. Public opinion may then prove more effective than refugee law at providing safe haven. In such a scenario, it is not merely the economic and integration-related factors that have an oversized impact on public opinion, but also the connection between voters and specific migration-spurring events. This article investigates how blame attribution impacts attitudes towards asylum seekers. Specifically, it assesses people's attitudes towards migrants fleeing anthropogenic environmental crises and examines if attributing blame to one's own country for such crises can alter these attitudes. The article uses data from a pre-registered and well-powered survey experiment run on a quota-representative sample of 1527 Dutch respondents. Evidence from the experiment suggests that environmental disasters caused by the Netherlands spur Dutch respondents to favor migrants fleeing that disaster, whereas that effect is not present when an EU entity is responsible. The identified effects are statistically significant but rather small in magnitude. Leveraging these results, the article discusses whether future EU asylum legislation might be guided by attribution, irrespective of whether political currents reduce treaty-based obligations, and finally, proposes several avenues for future research.

Once vaccines against COVID-19 became available in many countries, a new challenge has emerged – how to increase the number of people who vaccinate? Different policies are being considered and implemented, including behaviourally informed interventions (i.e., nudges). The advantage of such policies is that they are expected to preserve people’s freedom. However, their effectiveness in enhancing vaccinations is not entirely clear. To be able to choose the most suitable policy to enhance vaccinations, while balancing public health against people’s freedoms, policymakers need to know which interventions work, but also which do not. Therefore, in this study we have experimentally examined two types of nudges, descriptive social norms, and saliency, on representative samples in Israel and the UK. We did not find evidence that informing people that the vast majority of their country-people intend to vaccinate enhanced vaccination intentions (Israel). We also did not find evidence that making the death experience from COVID-19, or its hard symptoms, salient enhanced vaccination intentions (UK). Finally, we have also examined the effectiveness of transparent nudges, in which people were informed they are being nudged and why. Such interventions as well did not change the results.

Significant changes in climate that impact livelihoods, physical health, and human security raise the question: Is climate change perceived as a valid criterion for long-term immigration, and if so, by whom and under what circumstances? To address these questions, we conducted a well-powered conjoint experiment with a quota-representative sample of Dutch respondents. Consistent with recent literature, our findings reveal that, in terms of public favorability, climate migrants are perceived more favorably than economic migrants but less favorably than asylum seekers fleeing persecution. Moreover, our results challenge the expectation that political ideology and climate attitudes moderate the favorability toward climate migrants.

Policymakers around the world are increasingly regulating creators' (copy)rights in their work. This includes economic rights and moral rights. While the former type of rights is recognized and protected in most jurisdictions, the approach to the latter - moral rights - differs. How allocation and protection of copyrights affects creators' choices depends on their preferences. Yet, creators' preferences are almost not researched empirically. This paper uses a conjoint experiment, applied for the first time in this context, on representative samples in the UK (general population and professionals) and the USA (professionals) designed to reveal people's preferences with respect to different rights derived from copyrights laws. We find that moral rights are valued more than economic rights, yet participants were willing to trade this right. Such findings might suggest reconsidering existing regulations in particularly with regards to the question of whether the right of attribution can and should be "traded".

The public tends to underestimate the level of public debt. Can information about the actual level of indebtedness in one's own country, or elsewhere, make people more supportive of restrictive fiscal policies such as stringent fiscal rules? To answer this question, we run a set of well-powered survey experiments on quota-representative samples of respondents in Germany and Poland. We show that the mere information about the actual level of public debt in one's own country does not increase people's support for stringent fiscal rules. However, informing people about the levels of public debt abroad does have an effect. On average, people are more (less) supportive of strict fiscal rules when they are provided with the information about the low (high) level of public debt abroad.

Research on public attitudes about the use and efficacy of drone strikes primarily focuses on the United States. While there is a burgeoning second generation of public opinion research on drone strikes and drone warfare, in general, our understanding of cross-national public attitudes remains limited, particularly if non-US respondents behave and/or think differently. To address this, we extend Krep's (2014) and Walsh and Schulzke's (2018) research and conduct four surveys in three countries (Italy, Poland, and Germany) with 5,485 respondents to investigate how individuals outside the United States interpret ethical, moral, and casualty aversion framing in relation to support for drone strikes. Our results show that in all three countries, like the United States, respondents prefer drone strikes to traditional military operations but that support for drone strikes decreases when prompted with ethical and moral framing. Additional information about casualty aversion and reducing the physical risk to servicemembers' lives does not significantly influence support for drone strikes compared to traditional military operations. La recherche relative aux attitudes publiques quant & agrave; l'utilisation et l'efficacit & eacute; des frappes aux drones se concentre en premier lieu sur les & Eacute;tats-Unis. Bien que l'on assiste actuellement & agrave; la naissance d'une deuxi & egrave;me g & eacute;n & eacute;ration de recherche sur l'opinion publique & agrave; l'& eacute;gard des frappes de drone et du combat au drone, de fa & ccedil;on g & eacute;n & eacute;rale, notre compr & eacute;hension des attitudes publiques transnationales reste limit & eacute;e, notamment si des participants non am & eacute;ricains se comportent et/ou r & eacute;fl & eacute;chissent diff & eacute;remment. Pour y rem & eacute;dier, nous prolongeons la recherche de Krep (2014) et de Walsh et Schulzke (2018) en menant quatre exp & eacute;riences de sondage dans trois pays (Italie, Pologne et Allemagne) aupr & egrave;s de 5 485 participants pour examiner comment les non-Am & eacute;ricains interpr & egrave;tent le cadrage & eacute;thique, moral et allergique aux victimes collat & eacute;rales concernant le soutien aux frappes de drones. Nos r & eacute;sultats montrent que dans ces trois pays, comme aux & Eacute;tats-Unis, les participants pr & eacute;f & egrave;rent les frappes de drones aux op & eacute;rations militaires traditionnelles, mais que ce soutien diminue d & egrave;s que l'on aborde leur cadrage & eacute;thique et moral. Des informations suppl & eacute;mentaires sur l'aversion aux victimes collat & eacute;rales et la r & eacute;duction des risques physiques pour la vie des officiers n'ont pas d'incidence significative sur le soutien aux frappes de drones par rapport aux op & eacute;rations militaires traditionnelles. Las investigaciones en materia de las actitudes p & uacute;blicas con respecto al uso y la eficacia de los ataques con drones tienden a centrarse principalmente en Estados Unidos. Aunque existe una creciente segunda generaci & oacute;n de investigaciones en materia de opini & oacute;n p & uacute;blica con respecto a los ataques con drones y la guerra con drones, nuestra comprensi & oacute;n de las actitudes p & uacute;blicas transnacionales sigue, en general, siendo limitada, en particular si los encuestados no estadounidenses se comportan y/o piensan de manera diferente. Con el fin de abordar esto, ampliamos la investigaci & oacute;n de Krep (2014) y de Walsh y Schulzke (2018), y realizamos cuatro encuestas en tres pa & iacute;ses (Italia, Polonia y Alemania) con 5 485 encuestados para investigar c & oacute;mo las personas fuera de los EE. UU. interpretan el marco & eacute;tico, moral y de aversi & oacute;n a las bajas en relaci & oacute;n con el apoyo a los ataques con drones. Nuestros resultados demuestran que, en los tres pa & iacute;ses, al igual que en Estados Unidos, los encuestados prefieren los ataques con drones a las operaciones militares tradicionales, pero que el apoyo a los ataques con drones disminuye cuando estos se presentan con un marco & eacute;tico y moral. La informaci & oacute;n adicional relativa a la aversi & oacute;n a las bajas y a la reducci & oacute;n del riesgo f & iacute;sico para la vida de los militares no influye significativamente en el apoyo a los ataques con drones en comparaci & oacute;n con las operaciones militares tradicionales.