Author(s) This pre-registration is currently anonymous to enable blind peer-review. It has one author.
Pre-registered on 02/27/2018 01:30 PM (PT)
1) Have any data been collected for this study already? No, no data have been collected for this study yet.
2) What's the main question being asked or hypothesis being tested in this study? The main question being asked is when people oppose global private regulatory bodies setting environmental standards. Existing literature (Authority Transfer Hypothesis) suggests: Support/Favorability in the Governance condition will be significantly lower than support in the Basic Condition
In contrast, I argue that Support/Favorability in the Governance condition will not be significantly lower than support in the Basic Condition. Rather, I hypothesize: Support/Favorability in the Politicized Governance conditions will be significantly lower than support in (1) the Basic condition, and (2) the Governance condition.
With regard to differentiation between the Politicized Governance conditions, I hypothesize that the effect of each of these conditions will be moderated by partisanship (for the Republican and Democratic conditions) and by media trust for the media politicization condition. Specifically, support will decrease most in the Politicized Republican condition among Republicans, most in the Politicized Democrat condition among Democrats, and most in the Politicized Media condition among those high in media trust.
Beyond the main experimental effects, I also predict that support for these organizations in the no information and basic conditions will be positive (i.e. above the midpoint on the 5-point Likert scales).
3) Describe the key dependent variable(s) specifying how they will be measured. There are three dependent variables that will be analyzed both individually and combined into an additive index:
Favorability: How strongly respondents favor the organizations measured on 5-point favor-oppose scale.
Legitimacy: How legitimate respondents perceive the organizations to be measured on a 5-point legitimate-illegitimate scale.
Democratic: How democratic respondents perceive the organizations to be measured on a 5-point democratic-undemocratic scale.
4) How many and which conditions will participants be assigned to? There are six conditions:
No information: Respondents are provided no information about the organizations
Basic: Respondents are provided with basic information about the organizations
Governance: Condition augments Basic condition with information about non-government decision-making structure
Politicized Media: Condition augments Governance condition with information that journalists have condemned organization as illegitimate and undemocratic
Politicized Republican: Condition augments Governance condition with information that Republican politicians have condemned organization as illegitimate and undemocratic
Politicized Democrat: Condition augments Governance condition with information that Democratic politicians have condemned organization as illegitimate and undemocratic
5) Specify exactly which analyses you will conduct to examine the main question/hypothesis. Linear regression will be used. The dependent variables (both the index and the three constitutive variables) will be regressed on a categorical variable indicating treatment group. The key comparisons are between the Basic Condition and the Governance condition, as well as between the Basic Condition and the Politicized Governance conditions.
In a first set of analyses, the three "politicization" conditions will be pooled. In a second set of analyses, each politicization condition will be it's own treatment level. Besides the direct effect, I will also run a model in which I interact the treatment variable with partisanship. This latter analysis will have two specifications, one in which partisanship is measured on the 7-point scale and one in which the variable is collapsed as Republican, Democrats, and Independents, whereby leaners are counted as partisans.
6) Describe exactly how outliers will be defined and handled, and your precise rule(s) for excluding observations. No observations will be excluded. Secondary analyses will examine whether the experimental results are moderated by the manipulation check variables.
7) How many observations will be collected or what will determine sample size? No need to justify decision, but be precise about exactly how the number will be determined. Survey Sampling International will be contracted to collect a sample of 1000 respondents
8) Anything else you would like to pre-register? (e.g., secondary analyses, variables collected for exploratory purposes, unusual analyses planned?) I will also test whether any effect of the experimental conditions is mediated by perceptions of the organizations' politicization. Politicization will be operationalized (1) as an additive index of two 5-point Likert questions about the organizations being mixed up in politics and decisions favoring some groups over others and (2) through a binary variable measuring whether respondents perceive the organizations as fair or politically motivated.
In addition to the experimental analyses, I will also analyze the correlates of support for these organizations. Key explanatory variables will include stealth democracy attitudes, globalism attitudes, populist attitudes, attitudes toward the environment and basic demographic and political attitudes.