Citation

Finkel SE, McCauley JF, Neureiter M, Belasco CA. Terrorism Polit. Violence 2023; 35(4): 888-907.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/09546553.2021.1987893

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Researchers have commonly treated misrepresentations in survey responses as an impediment to the accurate measurement of a variable or construct of substantive importance. This study builds on that approach and considers whether misreporting bias regarding support for violent extremism--both under- and over-reporting--may then have consequences for how terrorist violence itself unfolds. Using data from nearly 4,000 respondents in thirty-five communes in Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger collected just prior to a recent wave of terrorist attacks, we find that communes where individuals under-report their true support for violent extremism--as measured with unobtrusive experimental methods--have a greater probability of experiencing subsequent Islamist attacks, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics of the commune, country-level proximity effects, and other time-varying factors. The findings raise important considerations regarding the measurement of extremist support, and they suggest a new tool for identifying communities potentially susceptible to terrorist violence.

Language: en

Keywords

Africa; experiment; preference falsification; terrorist attacks; Violent extremism