Attitudinal Consistency in Citizens’ Social Policy Preferences

Studies of public opinion on welfare policies implement increasingly concrete and complex survey measures that frequently assume relative preferences on the part of respondents. Yet, we lack evidence on whether voters hold such structured attitudes toward welfare policies. We rely on novel survey data from eight West European countries to study horizontal attitudinal constraint in welfare policy preferences. Addressing both logical and relational consistency, we find that most respondents hold structured welfare belief systems and relative preferences about where reform is more important, even when confronted with complex questions and explicit trade-offs. Moreover, by addressing individual-level heterogeneity, we show that differences related to sociodemographic factors and political attitudes are rather minor. Consistent welfare preferences are not exclusive to highly sophisticated individuals. These results have important implications for survey research implementing increasingly complex measures of preferences, such as explicit trade-offs or rating tasks, in social policy as well as in other policy areas.