A Registered Report on Place-Based Resentment: Exploring Urban-Rural Tensions in Sweden

Abstract This Registered Report examines urban-rural tensions in Sweden – a historically egalitarian, multi-party welfare state with strong geographical equalization schemes, making it a least-likely case for place-based resentment theories. Using an online survey experiment ( n = 2,051), we measured resentment through perceptions of in-group and out-group, and by experimentally varying whether political statements came from rural or urban politicians. Rural respondents showed stronger in-group identification, greater place-based resentment, and more negative stereotypes of their out-group than urban respondents. However, we find no evidence of place-based bias – that is, that rural respondents are less receptive to urban politicians’ statements, or vice versa. These findings reveal clear urban-rural tensions in a context often considered unlikely for such divides, underscoring the role of regional identities in political discourse and policy in multi-party welfare states beyond Anglo-Saxon settings, while indicating that these tensions do not translate into systematic bias in evaluating political statements.