Does deterrence change preferences? Evidence from a natural experiment

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Abstract

The deterrent effects of counter-violence initiatives could backfire if they cause preferences to change so that the perceived gains from violent actions increase. We test the preference-change hypothesis in a quasi-experimental design exploiting the random location of segments of the wall between the West Bank and Israel, an initiative intended to deter armed resistance. We undertake incentivised decision tasks with Palestinians to measure key individual traits that determine the valuation of political actions: preferences for risk, uncertainty and time delay. We show that people living close to the wall become more risk-tolerant, ambiguity averse and impatient than those unexposed to the wall, and this effect is amplified for people both exposed to and isolated (from the West Bank) by the wall. Preference-change could explain how repressive initiatives appear to perpetuate cycles of violence and resistance.

Section snippets

Background to the wall in the West Bank

The wall in the Palestinian territories is the most visible sign of the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Following a series of suicide attacks on Israeli citizens during the Second Intifada, in 2002 the Israeli government began the construction of the ‘barrier’, a wall separating the West Bank from the State of Israel. The official rational to erect the wall is one of deterrence: preventing Palestinians without permits from entering Israel through open areas. The wall was built within

The wall and preference change

The objective of this study is to test whether the imposition of the barrier wall can affect the way in which people make decisions by changing their underlying preferences for risk, ambiguity and time delay. The wall can be conceived of as a repressive initiative and a deterrent policy. We argue that the wall induces more risk tolerant, ambiguity averse and impatient preferences, which could undermine the deterrent effect of the wall. Our analysis offers empirical evidence to accompany

Research design and data

In this section we describe the research design tailored to test the hypotheses that the wall has changed individual preferences for risk, ambiguity and time discounting relative to the people not affected.14

Causality, exogeneity and selection bias

In order to identify a causal effect of exposure to the wall on preferences it must be the case that the route taken by the wall is exogenous with respect to individual preferences of Palestinians. Exogeneity in this context has several requirements. First, the wall must not be located so as to spatially separate people with particular preferences (more or less risk averse for instance). A comparison of treatment and control groups would capture pre-existing differences if this were the case.

Results

The descriptive statistics of our sample of participants by treatment area are shown in Table B.3 in the online Supplementary Material. Socio-economic characteristics across treatment and control groups are balanced.31

First we look at the distributions of preferences (figures in the

Discussion and conclusion

The principle of deterrence is advocated by many rational agent models and applied to counter-violence initiatives. The main assumption in these models is that preferences remain unchanged, and the logic of deterrence follows from this assumption on preferences: deterrence policies will decrease armed actions once and for all. Contrary to this, we show that preferences of Palestinians affected by a major deterrence policy, the wall between the West Bank and Israel, have changed in response.

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  • Cited by (0)

    We would like to thank participants in seminars and conferences at DIW Berlin, Maastricht, European Economic Association annual meeting, Essex, Karlsruhe, IMEBESS, FUR 2014 and Verein für SocialPolitik 2014, Innsbruck, WZB Berlin for stimulating discussions. We received helpful comments from Antonio Guarino, Shaun Hargreaves-Heap, George L, Ron Smith, David Schröder, Israel Waichman, Moti Michaeli, Philipp Reiss, Erwin Bulte, Steffen Huck, Orazio Attanasio and two anonymous referees. The authors are grateful to Haneen Ghazawneh and Aysheh Alawi for excellent assistance throughout the study and Farida, Fofo, Reem, Samah and Arwa for the data collection. Elisa Cavatorta gratefully acknowledges the support of the AXA Research Fund. This fieldwork has benefited from a financial grant from the Global Development Network-Economic Research Forum and a faculty grant from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The contents and recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the Global Development Network-Economic Research Forum. The responsibility for any errors or omissions is our own.

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