Dissertation
Second-hand policy feedback: the effect of out-of-state policy adoptions on policy support
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Summer 2025
DOI: 10.25820/etd.008084
Abstract
This study introduces a theory of “Second-Hand Policy Feedback,” in which individuals see or hear about policies adopted in other states and update their opinion on the policy based on the geographic, ideological, and cultural relationship between the individual and the states that have adopted the policy. This relationship is constrained by policy characteristics: individual policy preferences are less associated with policy adoptions when the policy is non-observable and complex.
In the first empirical chapter, I use a national survey of US adults to investigate the relationship between individual, state, and policy characteristics and out-of-state knowledge of four policies. Results indicate that Americans generally know about out-of-state policies. However, this knowledge varies with an individual’s educational attainment and ideological strength, a policy’s observability and complexity, and a state’s ideological liberalism and population size.
In the second empirical chapter, I use a sample of pooled surveys to find that individuals are more likely to support an out-of-state policy when a state that is geographically, ideologically, or culturally close to them adopts it. This has consequences for how researchers understand policy diffusion, in that policymakers may be responding to constituent preferences rather than being directly influenced by nearby states.
In the third empirical chapter, I apply a part of Rogers and Shoemaker’s (1971) theory of the diffusion of innovations to state policies, hypothesizing that the adoption of observable and non-complex policies is more likely to affect public opinion than the adoption of non-observable and/or non-complex policies. Results show that, while observability and complexity alone have little effect on opinion, there is little association between policy adoption and policy support for “submerged” (non-observable and complex) policies.
Taken together, this dissertation argues that Americans are aware of out-of-state policies and use that knowledge to adjust their policy opinions based on the states that adopt this policy, the process I call “second-hand policy feedback.” However, this effect is limited to policies that are either observable or non-complex.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Second-hand policy feedback: the effect of out-of-state policy adoptions on policy support
- Creators
- Samuel F. Harper
- Contributors
- Frederick J Boehmke (Advisor)Julianna Pacheco (Advisor)Caroline J Tolbert (Committee Member)Samantha Zuhlke (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- Political Science
- Date degree season
- Summer 2025
- DOI
- 10.25820/etd.008084
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- xii, 172 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2025 Samuel Franklin Harper
- Language
- English
- Date submitted
- 05/15/2025
- Description illustrations
- Illustrations, graphs, tables
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 146-169).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
Americans know about other states policy choices, and their support for those policies is associated with states adoptions of those policies. However, Americans seem to mostly be aware of policies they can easily see or policies that are not complex. Americans support for policies adopted by other states increases if those adopting states are neighbor their own state, or if the adopting states are perceived to be similar to their own state. A person is also less likely to support policies adopted by states ideologically distant from themself. I call this process of Americans knowing about (and possibly updating their opinion on) out-of-state policies Second-Hand Policy Feedback.
- Academic Unit
- Political Science
- Record Identifier
- 9984948642702771
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