Abstract
This article investigates whether the perceived threat of terrorism explains the support for right-wing Eurosceptic parties and Euroscepticism above and beyond other relevant variables, including perceived economic and immigration threats. We first examined the entire Eurobarometer samples of 2014 and 2015, and then conducted survey experiments in four European Union (EU) countries, that is, United Kingdom (N = 197), France (N = 164), Italy (N = 312), and Romania (N = 144). Our findings suggest that the perceived threat of terrorism has a small effect on the negative attitudes toward the EU above and beyond the effect of immigration and economic threats and other basic control variables. The relationship between these variables varies across countries and it is less linear than we might expect.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 1880 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
Volume | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Open Access - Access Right Statement
© 2019 Vergani, Bliuc, Stuart, Badea, Muntele and McGarty. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.Keywords
- European Union
- criticism
- intergroup relations
- intimidation
- political aspects
- right, wing extremists