Technological Risk and Policy Preferences

• Author: Aina Gallego,José Fernández-Albertos,Alexander Kuo,Dulce Manzano
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00104140211024290
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Comparative Political Studies

2022, Vol. 55(1) 60–92

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/00104140211024290

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Technological Risk and

Policy Preferences

Aina Gallego

1

,

Alexander Kuo

2

,

Dulce Manzano

3

, and

Jos´

e Fern´

andez-Albertos

4

Abstract

Despite recent attention to the economic and political consequences of

automation and technological change for workers, we lack data about con-

cerns and policy preferences about this structural change. We present hy-

potheses about the relationships among automation risk, subjective concerns

about technology, and policy preferences. We distinguish between prefer-

ences for compensatory policies versus “protectionist”policies to prevent

such technological change. Using original survey data from Spain that captures

multiple measures of automation risk, we find that most workers believe that

the impact of new technologies in the workplace is positive, but there is a

concerned minority. Technological concern varies with objective vulnera-

bility, as workers at higher risk of technological displacement are more likely

to negatively view technology. Both correlational and experimental analyses

indicate little evidence that workers at risk or technologically concerned are

more likely to demand compensation. Instead, workers concerned about

technological displacement prefer policies to slow down technological change.

Keywords

automation, technology, public opinion, economic policy

1

Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internationals, Barcelona, Spain

2

University of Oxford, Oxford, MS, USA

3

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

4

Centro Superior de Investigaciones Cient´

ıficas, Madrid, Spain

Corresponding Author:

Alexander Kuo, Manor Road Building, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK.

Email: alexander.kuo@politics.ox.ac.uk

Introduction

Digital andautomation technologies aredisrupting labor markets and rekindling

fears abouttechnological unemployment.The question of whether robotization,

automation, andartificial intelligence (AI) will make current jobs disappear has

been the subject of increasing mainstream and academic attention (e.g.,

Acemoglu & Restrepo,2018). These fears have groundingin recent studies that

find a net negative impact of specific technologies,such as industrial robots, on

the number of jobs and wages in local labor markets in the United States

(Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2020). There is growing concern among labor

economists that many occupations and workers are being threatened by rapid

advances in technology that will, absent policy interventions, pose a massive

threat to the wages and jobsecurity of some workers (IMF,2019). These trends

may be intensified with the covid-19 crisis and the extension of teleworking.

Despite the importance and controversy of this topic, we still know little

about the perceptions and demands of workers concerning technological

change. Are workers worried that the adoption of new technologies in the

workplace willhave negative consequences for theirjobs? Is this concern more

common among workers at a higher risk of substitution by technology? Do

perceptions of technological risk generate demand for different policies, and if

so, which ones?Understanding public concernsand preferences is necessary as

they can affect government responses to the structural challenge of accelerating

technological change. The relative inattention to these questions in political

science contrastswith the ample and instructive literature on how other sources

of job risk affect social-policy preferences, such as deindustrialization (Iversen

& Cusack, 2000), international trade and globalization (e.g., Walter, 2010,

2017), general occupational insecurity (Rehm, 2016), and the deregulation of

labor-market contracts (e.g., H¨

ausermann et al., 2015).

This article examines which workers are concerned about the introduction

of new technologies in the workplace and which policies they support to

address labor-market risks related to the introduction of technology. We make

two main contributions. We first propose and test a set of hypotheses relating

objective risk of displacement due to the introduction of new technologies

(based on occupational characteristics) to subjective concern about the impact

of technological change in one’s workplace. Subjective concern is often

assumed as a key mechanism for why exposure to job-downgrading risks

affects preferences, but such preoccupation is infrequently directly measured

regarding technological risk.

Our second contribution is to analyze how objective risks and subjective

concern affect policy preferences to address job consequences related to

technological change. We distinguish between two categories of policy

preferences. First, we consider policies to compensate for unemployment risks

via redistribution. Second, using the terminology regarding openness-based

Gallego et al. 61

risks, we categorize policies to prevent change (such as slowing down the pace

of technological change) or preserve the occupational status quo as “protec-

tionist”policies. These two policy categories to respond toeconomic structural

changes are often kept separate in studies of public preferences for policies.

Differentiating these policy preferences is relevant because such policies may

have different levels of support, regardless of their efficiency consequences.

Although slowing down workplace technological change could be more

growth-reducing than redistribution, politicians may emphasize the former if it

gains popular support.

We test our hypotheses using a large survey from Spain, an economically

developed democracy where technological change has recently produced

transformationsin the labor-market structure,where there are still largenumbers

of workers at risk, but where these issues are not yet strongly politicized. We

measure individuals’occupation-based vulnerability to technological dis-

placement using two main approaches proposed in the literature, adapted to a

survey context. These are the standard measure of routine task intensity (RTI)

(Autor et al., 2003) and a measure about how frequently workers perform tasks

at low risk of automation (TLRA) (Arntz et al., 2017). We field one of the few

surveys that include both these occupation and task-based measures of auto-

mation risk. After assessing if people at higher objective risk have higher

subjective concern, we test if either objective indicators or subjective concern

correlate with policy preferences. To assess if the effects of subjective concern

on policypreferences are plausiblycausal, we use a priming experimentto test if

individuals primedto think about technological change in the workplace adjust

their policy preferences, relative to a control group and to individuals primed

with other labor-related concerns.

We obtainthe following main findings. First, peopleview the consequences

of the introductionof new technologies in the workplaceas positive, on average,

and there is little support for adopting measures to decelerate the adoption of

technology in the workplace. Second, we find that task-based measures of

automation risk are more strongly correlated with subjective concern than

routine-task intensity measures. Third, the correlational and experimental an-

alyses indicate that individuals who are concerned about technology support

slowing down the pace of technological innovation. Fourth, we find little

evidence thateither objective risks or subjectiveconcerns correlate with greater

demand for compensation policies.

Combined, our results find little evidence of technological “alarmism”

among workers. But they also suggest that a potential reaction to feeling

threatened by technology is to demand that governments prevent technologi-

cal change rather than compensation. The first section presents relevant

motivati on liter ature. The Theoretical Expectations section presents hypoth-

eses. The Data section presents the design. The Result section presents results

62 Comparative Political Studies 55(1)