Date of Award

2019

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Qi Ge

Abstract

This paper investigated the impact of economic valuation of gun control on views, attitudes, and behaviors towards gun control legislation in an experimental setting. The data for this study was collected through the use of a survey administered on MTurk in March 2019. The sample consists of 810 participants evenly disturbed between a treatment group and a control group. Both groups received a narrative regarding gun violence in the United States, however the treatment group received economic valuation information in addition to the qualitative description. Participants were then given the opportunity to donate a part of their compensation to a gun control organization. Prior research has shown that salience of monetary value of natural resources lead to decreased support for natural resource conservation funds (Goff et al., 2017) Using a probabilistic regression model, we found that economic valuation information increased likelihood of supporting a tax policy that would decrease gun violence but increase taxes with no impact on propensity to donate. Furthermore, we found that participants who were female, college-educated, or gun owners when subjected to the treatment were more likely to support the proposed tax policy. Based on this evidence, we assert that economic valuation information has the potential to increase support for gun control legislation.

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