Towards a Theory of Genuine Sociotropic Concern The Three Dimensions of Caring about the Collective Interest. A Theory Building Exercise and Systematic Literature Review

This paper develops a novel theoretical framework for the concept of ‘sociotropic concern’ as a genuine interest in the welfare of one’s community, and reviews the great majority of prior studies investigating the extent to which such concern motivates policy attitudes by means of a pre-registered systematic literature review. The economic voting literature has spawned two different interpretations of the concept of sociotropic concern: one strand considers it a form of indirect, or ‘obfuscated’, self-interest whereby people use information about aggregate economic benefits of policy as a proxy for how this ultimately affects themselves, the second strand views it instead as a form of genuine concern for collective welfare independent from egotropic considerations. This paper argues that the second interpretation of sociotropic concern is more valuable, yet theoretically underdeveloped. Hence, a framework is put forward to discern genuine sociotropic concern, setting the concept apart from sister yet distinct ideas such as solidarity and altruism. This framework outlines three essential dimensions of the concept: a community of reference, a regard for the wellbeing of the other, and causal beliefs of a policy’s effect on welfare. Building on this theoretical framework, the paper presents a systematic literature review of research investigating the relationship between sociotropic concern as motivated by genuine concern for others and support for public policy, showing that while the conceptualisation presented has substantial empirical bite, there is meaningful variation of study outcomes over policy field, methodology and community of reference.