Policies on Dying: Assisted Suicide in Germany

This paper studies the effect of exposing German individuals to real-life cases on attitudes toward the legalization of assisted suicide. We find that support for legalizing assisted suicide changes in 21 % of our sample. Among those who strongly favor the policy, support weakens when they encounter real-life cases, as their confidence in their opinions diminishes. Respondents who oppose are less likely to shift to strongly oppose. We also find that the change in opinion due to exposure to cases is mediated by respondents' prior beliefs on the cases’ outcome. We also explore the reasons why some respondents do not change their opinions. We find that respondents more likely to change their support are those who attribute lower credibility to the information provided.