Figure 1.
This figure displays the effect of the threat treatment on an individual's support for governmental monitoring of the internet (larger values imply greater support).
The figure indicates that the treatment significantly increases support for these policies (p<.001). This result coincides with my theoretical expectations, indicating that mentioning threats makes policies purported to reduce threats more attractive.
Table 1.
This table displays the results of a regression including random effects for the respondent's state.
Figure 2.
This figure displays the effect of the threat treatment for different levels of social network use (positive values indicate greater support for security policies).
Each point estimate (represented by a diamond) shows the predicted change in an individual's level of support for government monitoring of the internet. Around each point estimate there are two lines. The heavier shaded line represents a 90% confidence interval, while the lighter shaded line represents a 95% confidence interval. The figure illustrates that the effect of the security treatment diminishes as social network website use increases. This supports the hypothesis that increased social network website use leads to more resistance to security-based rationales for increasing governmental monitoring.
Table 2.
This table displays descriptive statistics for the variables included in the regression model reported in Table 1.