RT Article
T1 The Role of Human Values in Explaining Support for European Union Membership
JF Journal of cross-cultural psychology
VO 52
IS 4
SP 372
OP 387
A1 Dennison, James
A1 Seddig, Daniel
A1 Davidov, Eldad 1971-
LA English
PB Sage
YR 2021
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1759592099
AB In recent years, there has been greater scholarly enquiry into explaining variation in support for European Union membership. We theorise that one cause of such variation is likely to be non-political psychological predispositions, such as one’s personal values. We test this proposition by applying Schwartz’s theory of basic human values to predict voting intentions in hypothetical referendums on EU membership. We theorise that these values determine both voting intentions and more proximate explanatory variables of support for EU membership: attitudes to immigration and identifying as European. Using data on 13 countries from the European Social Survey (N=24,703 citizens) and multigroup structural equation modeling, we demonstrate that this psychological framework effectively predicts voting intentions, notably in terms of the consistent cross-country evidence for indirect effects of values on support for membership via European identity and attitudes to immigration. We then discuss the implications of our findings, including differences in effects between countries.
K1 Euroscepticism
K1 European Identity
K1 attitudes to immigration
K1 referendums on European integration
K1 Human Values
DO 10.1177/00220221211005082