The Structure and Correlates of Societal Threat Perceptions: A Network Approach

Societal threats such as climate change, economic crises, and wars shape citizens’ political attitudes and behaviors. Yet, the structure of threat perceptions and their socio-demographic and ideological correlates remain underexplored. Using a six-wave Dutch survey (N = 685) and a network approach, we uncover the complexity of societal threat perceptions. First, we show that societal threat perceptions vary in their interconnectedness, with security threats as crime, the war in Ukraine, and asylum seekers emerging as central nodes. Second, ideology, age, and education are the most relevant variables linked to societal threat perceptions. Third, we replicate the structure of societal threat perceptions over time, highlighting the robustness of our conclusions. Our results reveal that societal threat perceptions form a stable and complex network, offering insights into how citizens process and respond to societal challenges. Future research should examine how contextual factors and interventions may reshape these networks.