Do Citizens Know About Other States’ Policy Choices?

While citizens’ knowledge of their own state’s policies has been investigated, little attention has been paid to citizens’ knowledge of policy differences across the United States. Citizen knowledge of out-of-state policy adoptions may drive diffusion, but a direct test of this knowledge has yet to be conducted. Using a national survey of US adults, I investigate the relationship between individual, state, and policy characteristics and out-of-state knowledge of four policies: recreational marijuana legalization, assault weapon bans, physician-assisted suicide, and in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants. I find that Americans know about out-of-state policies. However, this knowledge varies with an individual’s education attainment and ideological strength, a policy’s observability and complexity, and a state’s liberalism and population.