Attitudes and behaviors in a fragile state. A list experiment in Mali

Abstract

Understanding individual behaviors and attitudes towards political regimes is key to explaining their persistence. However, scantily available micro-level indicators are likely to be biased, especially in non-democratic settings where people might refrain from answering sensitive questions truthfully. We study behaviors and attitudes in Mali, at a time of conflict and military rule, by running an experimental survey on a nationwide sample of individuals. We elicit the prevalence rates of two attitudes towards the military situation in Mali and three behaviors associated with the ongoing conflict (firearms possession, willingness to engage in violence and victimization). Results indicate that support for the military regime is overreported and trust in the foreign armed forces deployed in the country is underreported when elicited by means of direct questions as opposed to a list experiment. Behaviors are not significantly misreported on average, but they are misreported by certain population segments particularly vulnerable to violence. This impacts directly on the estimation of correlations between respondent characteristics and sensitive outcomes when measured by direct questions.