Deservingness als Heuristik oder als Automatismus?

Previous contributions have cogently addressed the effect of individual-specific and context-related features, preferences, and values on welfare attitudes. Imminent studies have also reviewed their collective impact on the construction and reform of social security systems. This article proceeds from subject- to object-related arguments and explores the effect, robustness, and stability of deservingness attributions on the willingness to enforce active labor market policies. We utilize a comprehensive survey experiment embedded with the European Social Survey (Round 8, fieldwork in 2016/17). Across twenty-three different countries, respondents were randomly assigned vignettes that characterize diverse levels of control, need, and reciprocity of benefit claimants. The empirical findings demonstrate that deservingness cues provide consistent and robust causal effects on the willingness to enforce active labor market policies. These findings are of scientific and political relevance because they enable self-interested political actors to frame benefit claimants and thus to impact political opinion on the welfare state more directly.