Frame Uptake Modalities In Conscription Policy: An Experimental Inquiry into German Attitudes on Military Service

This study employs a 2 × 4 factorial survey experiment (N = 60) to examine how contextual escalation and message framing shape public acceptance of compulsory service. Respondents were randomly assigned to vignettes varying by context (neutral versus escalation) and framing strategy (control, securitisation, collective responsibility, national identity). Attitudes were measured across three dimensions: Civic-Duty, National-duty, and threat-response. Results show that escalation cues consistently increase acceptance, but only value-forward frames invoking shared responsibility and national identity surpass the threshold of assent. In contrast, securitisation framing underperforms the control, suggesting that alarmist threat narratives erode legitimacy when contextual salience is already high. The findings align with a morality-register account of framing, whereby appeals to duty and belonging travel further than instrumental risk narration. For policy design, the results recommend situationally pairing escalation cues with responsibility and identity frames to minimise resistance to conscription, while avoiding over-securitisation