“We need the right kind of people in this neighborhood”: racial motivation in opposition to new housing construction

Abstract How we measure racial bias matters. Previous literature demonstrates that direct questioning leads to unreliable responses. Scholars have thus developed a number of techniques to uncover racial bias without cuing a defensive response. I investigate the performance of text- and image-based factorial experiments in the case of racial motivation for opposition to new housing development relative to a more traditional list experiment. My results demonstrate that these often-used methods yield substantially different conclusions about the importance of racial biases in opposition to new housing construction. While the factorial experiments suggest little evidence of racial bias, the more traditional list experiment reveals that the potential for racial change in their neighborhood is a concern for a meaningful share of respondents.