How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: Empirical Analysis of Conspiracy Theories (original) (raw)
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: Empirical Analysis of Conspiracy Theories 1{ }^{1}
Serhan Cevik 2{ }^{2}
International Monetary Fund
28 June 2023
Abstract
Conspiracy theories are everywhere, spreading like infectious diseases within and across countries. The rise of conspiracy-mongers is not just a nuisance, but a serious threat to political and economic stability. This paper provides an empirical analysis of cross-country differences in economic and institutional factors attracting people to conspiracy theories, using a dataset of nationally representative surveys conducted in 27 countries over the period 2018-2021. I find that conspiratorial thinking is more common in countries with lower level of income and higher levels of unemployment and income inequality. However, the most important socioeconomic factor in determining the popularity of conspiracy theories is educational attainments. Conspiratorial mentality is far more prevalent in countries with lower levels of tertiary education. I also find that well-functioning institutions-as measured by bureaucratic quality and corruption-are important in drawing people away and to conspiracy theories. Finally, while internal conflict and tensions are not concomitant to conspiracy ideation, external conflict and the risk of terrorism are positively associated with the popularity of conspiratorial attitudes across countries.
JEL Classification Numbers: D83; D84; D91; E71; P16
Keywords: Conspiracy theories; disinformation; income; education; institutions; internal and external threats
- 1{ }^{1} The author would like to thank Bernardin Akitoby for helpful comments and suggestions. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management.
2{ }^{2} scevik@imf.org ↩︎
All is not well. I doubt some foul play.
—Shakespeare
1. Introduction
Conspiracy theories have existed in public discourse throughout history, but a new wave of conspiratorial ideation-from the QAnon to anti-vaccination movements-is now spreading like infectious diseases within and across countries. The surge of conspiracy-mongers is not just a nuisance, but presents a serious threat to social harmony and political and economic stability by delegitimating institutions and creating an environment of distrust and prejudice (Sunstein and Vermeule, 2009; Sunstein, 2014). Conspiracy beliefs and other pseudo-scientific claims are “attempts to explain the ultimate causes of significant social and political events and circumstances with claims of secret plots” (Douglas and others, 2019). This tendency to attribute events to secret manipulations by clandestine groups is a multifaceted phenomenon shaped by psychological traits, cognitive biases, political leanings, and socioeconomic dynamics (Goertzel, 1994; Pigden, 1995; Keeley, 1999; Barkun, 2003; Swami, 2012; Brotherton and French, 2014; Van Prooijen, Krouwel, and Pollet, 2015; DiGrazia, 2017; Mancosu, Vassallo, and Vezzoni, 2017; Drochon, 2018; Butter and Knight, 2020; Uscinski and others, 2020; Cordonier, Cafiero, and Bronner, 2021; Casara, Suitner, and Jetten, 2022; Imhoff and others, 2022; Latkin and others, 2022; Uscinski and others, 2022).
The objective of this paper is not to develop a formal theory of conspiracy thinking but to provide an empirical analysis to better understand cross-country differences in economic, institutional and political factors drawing people to conspiracy theories, using a dataset of nationally representative surveys conducted in 27 advanced and developing countries over the period 2018-2021. In the most recent survey by the YouGov-Cambridge Centre for Public Opinion Research, an average of 22.2 percent of the population endorses various conspiratorial beliefs, with a minimum of 10 percent in Denmark and a maximum of 36 percent in India. Could this substantial heterogeneity in the popularity of conspiracy theories across countries be simply a reflection of differences in the level of income? In recent reviews of the literature, Alper (2022),
Figure 1. Prevalence of Conspiracy Theories
Source: YouGov-Cambridge Center Centre for Public Opinion Research; World Bank; author’s calculations.
Hornsey and Pearson (2022), and Hornsey and others (2022) find that conspiracy beliefs tend to be more prevalent in countries that are less democratic, more corrupt and lower in income per capita. As shown in Figure 1, there is strong negative correlation between real GDP per capita and the share of people believing in conspiracy theories in the absence of country fixed effects. However, correlation does not establish causation. There is still no consensus in the literature on what promotes the spread of conspiracy beliefs. Studies find evidence for a multitude of factors beyond the level of income that contribute to people’s inclination towards conspiratorial thinking-ranging from economic uncertainty to societal anxiety.
In this paper, I conduct an econometric analysis using a large panel of nationally-representative surveys in 27 advanced and developing countries, which form a good cross-country testing ground to analyze the role of economic conditions, human capital, institutional quality, political regimes, and internal and external threats. The results indicate that conspiracy theories are more common in countries with lower levels of income and higher levels of unemployment. However, the most important socioeconomic factor in determining the cross-country variation in conspiratorial attitudes is educational attainments. Significantly more people gravitate toward conspiracy theories in countries with lower levels of tertiary education. I also find that wellfunctioning institutions-as measured by bureaucratic quality and corruption-are important in drawing people away and to conspiracy theories. Furthermore, while internal conflict and tensions are not concomitant with the prevalence of conspiracy thinking, external conflict and the risk of terrorism are positively associated with the popularity of conspiratorial thinking across countries. Finally, to ensure robustness and develop a more granular analysis, I interact education with institutional, political and conflict factors and find that higher educational attainments weakens the impact of corruption, external threats and terrorism on the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories.
What can we do to halt the spread of conspiracy theories? Empirical findings presented in this paper-robust to different specifications-underscore the importance of promoting the accumulation of human capital through advanced education, strengthening bureaucratic quality and anti-corruption measures, providing greater transparency in governance and clarity on
Figure 2. Distribution of Conspiracy Theory Prevalence
external threats, and proactively correcting misinformation to stand against prevalent conspiracy theories that corrode social trust, undermine societal institutions, and thereby lead to economic and political instability. Interweaving conspiracy theories is a common practice to explicate unexplained or extraordinary events, especially in times of heightened uncertainty and vulnerability. No doubt conspiratorial thinking is complex, but identifying the root causes can help us create an environment in which people will be less likely to gravitate toward conspiratorial conclusions. A country where more people have advanced education to understand the fundamental origins of domestic and international events, where more people have greater influence over socioeconomic and political developments, and where more people do not see the world through a tribalistic prism, will be less susceptible to conspiratorial beliefs.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Section II provides an overview of the data used in the empirical analysis. Section III describes the econometric methodology and presents the empirical results. Finally, Section IV summarizes and provides concluding remarks.
2. Data Overview
The empirical analysis presented in this study is based on a panel of annual observations on conspiracy mentality in 27 countries, including both advanced and emerging market economies, over the period 2018-2021. 3{ }^{3} Survey data are taken from the YouGov-Cambridge Center for Public Opinion Research, which is a joint research center run by YouGov, an international data analytics company, and the Department of Politics and International Studies at Cambridge University. These nationally representative surveys conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Center cover more than 25,000 adults from 27 countries and include a range of questions on conspiracy theories-from “regardless of who is officially in charge of governments and other organizations, there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together” to “coronavirus is a myth created by some powerful forces, and the virus does not really exist”. 4{ }^{4} Responses can vary from “Definitely True” to “Definitely False” with regards to 12 popular conspiracy theories. 5{ }^{5} Given the heterogeneity in conspiracy theories covered in these surveys, I group “Definitely True” and “Probably True” together to fully capture the available information and minimize potential measurement error.
The explanatory variables include real GDP per capita, unemployment rate, trade openness (measured by the share of exports and imports in GDP), educational attainments (measured by the share of population with tertiary education), composite indices of bureaucratic quality,
- 3{ }^{3} Country coverage shows some variation from year to year. The list of countries in the sample includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
4{ }^{4} Detailed information on the YouGov-Cambridge Center for Public Opinion Research and its surveys may be found at https://yougov.co.uk/topics/yougov-cambridge/home.
5{ }^{5} Appendix Table A1 provides the latest questionnaire. ↩︎
corruption, democratic accountability and government stability, and measures of internal and external conflict, ethnic and religious tensions, and terrorism, which are obtained from the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG). Descriptive statistics for the variables used in the empirical analysis are presented in Table 1. There is a significant degree of dispersion across countries in the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories and considerable heterogeneity in economic, social and institutional factors.
| Table 1. Summary Statistics | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Variable | Observations | Mean | Std. dev. | Minimum | Maximum |
| Prevalence of conspiracy theories | 76 | 22.2 | 8.0 | 10.0 | 43.9 |
| Economic and social variables | |||||
| Real GDP per capita | 108 | 23,942 | 19,311 | 1,605 | 61,856 |
| Unemployment | 108 | 7.8 | 5.8 | 0.7 | 33.6 |
| Educational attainments | 94 | 32.8 | 14.9 | 3.5 | 62.0 |
| Trade openness | 108 | 65.0 | 31.1 | 16.4 | 163.3 |
| Institutional and political variables | |||||
| Bureaucratic quality | 108 | 2.9 | 0.8 | 1.0 | 4.0 |
| Corruption | 108 | 3.3 | 1.3 | 1.5 | 6.0 |
| Democratic accountability | 108 | 4.9 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 6.0 |
| Government stability | 108 | 7.3 | 0.9 | 5.0 | 9.5 |
| Conflict variables | |||||
| Internal conflict | 108 | 9.0 | 1.1 | 6.5 | 10.5 |
| External conflict | 108 | 9.8 | 1.1 | 7.0 | 11.5 |
| Ethnic tensions | 108 | 3.8 | 1.2 | 2.0 | 6.0 |
| Religious tensions | 108 | 4.6 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 6.0 |
| Terrorism | 108 | 2.5 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 3.5 |
| Source: YouGov-Cambridge Center Centre; ICRG; OECD; World Bank; author’s calculations; author’s calculations. |
3. Empirical Strategy and Results
The objective of this paper is to investigate the impact of macro-level determinants of the prevalence of conspiracy theories in 27 countries over the period 2018-2021. Taking advantage of the panel structure in the data, I estimate the following benchmark empirical specification:
CTit=β1+β2ECOit+β3POLit+β4CONit+ηi+μt+εitC T_{i t}=\beta_{1}+\beta_{2} E C O_{i t}+\beta_{3} P O L_{i t}+\beta_{4} C O N_{i t}+\eta_{i}+\mu_{t}+\varepsilon_{i t}
where CTitC T_{i t} is the share of people believing in conspiracy theories in country ii and time t;ECOitt ; E C O_{i t} denotes a vector of socioeconomic factors including real GDP per capita, unemployment rate, income inequality, educational attainments and trade openness; POLitP O L_{i t} is a vector of institutional and political variables including bureaucratic quality, corruption, democratic accountability or government stability; CONit\operatorname{CON}_{i t} is a vector of conflict variables including internal conflict, external conflict, ethnic tensions, religious tensions or terrorism. The ηi\eta_{i} and μt\mu_{t} coefficients denote the time-invariant country-specific effects and the time effects controlling for common shocks that may affect the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories across all countries in a given year,
respectively. 6εit{ }^{6} \varepsilon_{i t} is an idiosyncratic error term. To account for possible heteroskedasticity, robust standard errors are clustered at the country level.
With a strongly balanced panel dataset, the empirical analysis presented in this paper provides relatively more precise insights into the contributing factors to the prevalence of conspiracy theories across countries and over time compared to most existing studies that do not rely on panel data. The results of the fixed effects model demonstrate a consistent picture with the signs of all estimated parameters corresponding to their expected values across different specifications.
The level of real GDP per capita is inversely related to the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories, suggesting that conspiratorial thinking tends to be less prevalent, on average, in more developed economies. The coefficient on real GDP per capita is small in magnitude but statistically highly significant across all specifications. This is also consistent with the positive effect of unemployment, which indicates that conspiracy theories flourish under weak economic conditions. 7{ }^{7} Trade openness, on the other hand, is found to have a negative but statistically insignificant negative effect on the popularity of conspiracy theories, implying that greater integration with the rest of the world may reduce the tendency for conspiratorial thinking. However, the most important socioeconomic factor in determining cross-country differences in the prevalence of conspiracy theories is educational attainments. The coefficient on the share of population with tertiary education indicates a strong and statistically significant negative relationship between educational attainments and conspiratorial attitudes. A 1 percentage point increase in the share of population with advanced education leads to a decline of 2.25 percentage points in the popularity of conspiracy theories, after controlling for other factors. This result is consistent with prior research by Oliver and Wood (2014) based on large-scale surveys in the US that show education as the most consistent determinant of conspiracist thinking.
Introducing institutional and political variables do not alter these results, but provide more information on factors drawing people to conspiracy theories. Both bureaucratic quality and corruption have statistically and economically significant effects on the pervasiveness of conspiratorial thinking. While a higher level of bureaucratic quality is concomitant with a lower level of population believing in conspiracy theories, a higher incidence of corruption leads to an increase in the prevalence of conspiracy beliefs. An increase of 1 percentage point in bureaucratic quality lowers the share of population believing in conspiracy theories by 3.32 percentage points, whereas an increase of 1 percentage point in corruption brings about an increase of 4.18 percentage points in the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories. In a similar vein, democratic accountability and government stability are found to have negative effects on
- 6{ }^{6} Although I include a wide range of explanatory variables in the regression model, there is still a concern about omitted variable bias in estimations. The fixed effects model used in the analysis, however, should control for “omitted” factors and thereby help reduce omitted variable bias.
7{ }^{7} I obtain similar results when I replace the unemployment rate with a measure of income inequality. ↩︎
Table 2. Determinants of Conspiracy Theories: Baseline Estimations
| [7] | [8] | [9] | [8] | [9] | [8] | [7] | [8] | [9] | [10] | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real GDP per capita | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} | −0.001∗∗∗-0.001^{* * *} |
| (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | (0.000) | |
| Unemployment | 0.349 | 0.414 | 0.383 | 0.349 | 0.349 | 0.550 | 0.131 | 0.383 | 0.352 | 0.290 |
| (0.217) | (0.216) | (0.214) | (0.237) | (0.217) | (0.304) | (0.299) | (0.205) | (0.220) | (0.227) | |
| Trade openness | −0.010-0.010 | −0.011-0.011 | −0.035-0.035 | −0.010-0.010 | −0.010-0.010 | −0.012-0.012 | −0.049-0.049 | −0.019-0.019 | −0.002-0.002 | −0.004-0.004 |
| (0.126) | (0.128) | (0.123) | (0.126) | (0.126) | (0.119) | (0.151) | (0.127) | (0.129) | (0.128) | |
| Educational attainments | −2.254∗∗∗-2.254^{* * *} | −2.310∗∗∗-2.310^{* * *} | −2.212∗∗∗-2.212^{* * *} | −2.253∗∗∗-2.253^{* * *} | −2.254∗∗∗-2.254^{* * *} | −2.223∗∗∗-2.223^{* * *} | −2.012∗∗∗-2.012^{* * *} | −2.286∗∗∗-2.286^{* * *} | −2.213∗∗∗-2.213^{* * *} | −2.270∗∗∗-2.270^{* * *} |
| (0.825) | (0.827) | (0.790) | (0.835) | (0.825) | (0.764) | (0.766) | (0.845) | (0.865) | (0.833) | |
| Bureaucratic quality | −3.324∗∗∗-3.324^{* * *} | |||||||||
| (1.568) | ||||||||||
| Corruption | 4.178*** | |||||||||
| (1.682) | ||||||||||
| Democratic accountability | −1.652-1.652 | |||||||||
| (1.242) | ||||||||||
| Government stability | −0.002-0.002 | |||||||||
| (0.829) | ||||||||||
| Internal conflict | 2.343 | |||||||||
| (1.871) | ||||||||||
| External conflict | 4.599** | |||||||||
| (2.014) | ||||||||||
| Ethnic tensions | 1.621 | |||||||||
| (1.674) | ||||||||||
| Religious tensions | 1.784 | |||||||||
| (2.155) | ||||||||||
| Terrorism | 2.500*** | |||||||||
| (0.828) | ||||||||||
| Number of observations | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 | 68 |
| Number of countries | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 | 27 |
| Country FE | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Time FE | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| ± d⋅ b2\pm \mathrm{~d} \cdot \mathrm{~b}^{2} | 0.81 | 0.81 | 0.82 | 0.81 | 0.81 | 0.82 | 0.84 | 0.81 | 0.81 | 0.82 |
Note: The dependent variable is the prevalence of conspiracy theories. Robust standard errors clustered at the country level are reported in brackets. *, **, and *** denote significance at the 10%,5%10 \%, 5 \%, and 1%1 \% levels, respectively.
Source: Author’s estimations.
conspiracist attitudes, but the estimated coefficients are not statistically significant at conventional levels. This is a somewhat puzzling result, but it is not completely surprising, in my view. Democratic regimes without the suppression of information could provide a fertile ground for conspiracy theories to thrive and spread, especially if institutions are weak and corruption is widespread. 8{ }^{8}
Conflicts risks could also contribute to an environment in which conspiracy theories thrive. To explore this relationship, I introduce a set of conflict variables and obtain interesting information, with no significant change in the baseline coefficients of the model. Internal conflict is associated with a higher acceptance of conspiratorial thinking, but this effect does not appear to be statistically significant. External conflict, on the other hand, has a highly significant positive effect on the prevalence of conspiracy theories. A 1 percentage point increase in external conflict risk leads to an increase of 4.6 percentage points in the share of population believing in conspiracy theories, after controlling for other factors. The greater importance of external threats is also confirmed when I estimate the model with ethnic and religious tensions, which are statistically insignificant at conventional levels, albeit with positive coefficients. Finally, I examine the risk of terrorism in determining the cross-country heterogeneity in the pervasiveness of conspiracist
- 8{ }^{8} Radnitz (2022) takes this point of view further and argues that the politics of democracies play an important role in fueling conspiracy theories. ↩︎
beliefs and find that it has a significant positive association with conspiracist ideation. In other words, the higher the incidence of terrorism, the higher the popularity of conspiracy theories in a country.
To ensure the robustness of the results and develop a more granular analysis of the main transmission channels, I examine how economic, institutional, political and conflict factors interact in influencing the prevalence of conspiratorial thinking across countries. These estimation results, presented in Table 3, shed light on a number of intriguing issues. First, the interaction between educational attainments and corruption is negative-the opposite sign of the corruption variable-and statistically significant. This result highlights the importance of
Table 3. Determinants of Conspiracy Theories: Interaction Terms
| [1] | [2] | [3] | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real GDP per capita | −0.001∗∗∗[0.000]\begin{aligned} & -0.001^{* * *} \\ & {[0.000]} \end{aligned} | −0.001∗∗∗[0.000]\begin{aligned} & -0.001^{* * *} \\ & {[0.000]} \end{aligned} | −0.001∗∗∗[0.000]\begin{aligned} & -0.001^{* * *} \\ & {[0.000]} \end{aligned} |
| Unemployment | 0.192[0.224]\begin{aligned} & 0.192 \\ & {[0.224]} \end{aligned} | 0.555[0.235]\begin{aligned} & 0.555 \\ & {[0.235]} \end{aligned} | 0.605[0.287]\begin{aligned} & 0.605 \\ & {[0.287]} \end{aligned} |
| Trade openness | −0.015[0.122]\begin{aligned} & -0.015 \\ & {[0.122]} \end{aligned} | −0.023[0.140]\begin{aligned} & -0.023 \\ & {[0.140]} \end{aligned} | −0.012[0.127]\begin{aligned} & -0.012 \\ & {[0.127]} \end{aligned} |
| Educational attainments | −3.018∗∗∗[0.844]\begin{aligned} & -3.018^{* * *} \\ & {[0.844]} \end{aligned} | −2.436∗∗∗[1.193]\begin{aligned} & -2.436^{* * *} \\ & {[1.193]} \end{aligned} | −1.452∗∗∗[0.686]\begin{aligned} & -1.452^{* * *} \\ & {[0.686]} \end{aligned} |
| Corruption | 10.838∗∗∗[7.075]\begin{aligned} & 10.838^{* * *} \\ & {[7.075]} \end{aligned} | ||
| External conflict | 16.388∗∗∗[3.898]\begin{aligned} & 16.388^{* * *} \\ & {[3.898]} \end{aligned} | ||
| Terrorism | 8.885∗∗∗[7.894]\begin{aligned} & 8.885^{* * *} \\ & {[7.894]} \end{aligned} | ||
| Education*Corruption | −0.177∗∗[0.565]\begin{aligned} & -0.177^{* *} \\ & {[0.565]} \end{aligned} | ||
| Education*External Conflict | −0.409∗∗∗[0.110]\begin{aligned} & -0.409^{* * *} \\ & {[0.110]} \end{aligned} | ||
| Education*Terrorism | −0.358∗∗∗[0.534]\begin{aligned} & -0.358^{* * *} \\ & {[0.534]} \end{aligned} | ||
| Number of observations | 68 | 68 | 68 |
| Number of countries | 27 | 27 | 27 |
| Country FE | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Time FE | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Adj R2R^{2} | 0.83 | 0.88 | 0.82 |
| Note: The dependent variable is the prevalence of conspiracy theories. Robust standard errors clustered at the country level are reported in brackets. *, **, and *** denote significance at the 10%,5%10 \%, 5 \%, and 1%1 \% levels, respectively. Source: Author’s estimations. |
higher education in weakening with the corrosive effect of corruption on institutional trust and thereby the popularity of conspiracy theories. Second, the interaction of educational attainments and external conflict is negative-the opposite sign of the external conflict variable-and statistically highly significant, which suggests that advanced education contributes to better assessment of external threats and thus breaks the link between external threats and conspiratorial thinking. Third, the interaction of educational attainments and terrorism is also negative-the opposite sign of the terrorism variable-with a high level of statistical significance, confirming that advanced education provides a barrier against the spread of conspiracy theories even under the risk of terrorism.
4. Conclusion
Conspiracy theories have existed in public discourse throughout history, but a new wave of conspiratorial ideation-from the QAnon to anti-vaccination movements-is now spreading like infectious diseases within and across countries. The surge of conspiracy-mongers is not just a nuisance, but presents a serious threat to social harmony and political and economic stability by delegitimating institutions and creating a social environment of distrust and prejudice. This tendency to attribute events to secret manipulations by clandestine groups is a complex phenomenon shaped by psychological traits, cognitive biases, political attachments, and socioeconomic factors. In this paper, I provide an empirical analysis of cross-country differences economic, institutional and political factors attracting people to conspiracy theories, using international surveys conducted in 27 countries over the period 2018-2021 by the YouGovCambridge Centre for Public Opinion Research.
There is significant heterogeneity in the popularity of conspiracy theories across countries, and I explore the role of economic conditions, human capital, institutional quality, political regimes, and internal and external threats. The results indicate that more people subscribe to conspiracy theories in countries with lower levels of income and higher levels of unemployment. However, the most important socioeconomic factor in determining the cross-country variation in the popularity of conspiratorial attitudes is educational attainments. Conspiracist ideation is significantly lower in countries with higher levels of tertiary education. I also find that wellfunctioning institutions-as measured by bureaucratic quality and perceived corruption-are important in drawing people away and to conspiracy theories. Furthermore, while internal conflict and tensions are not concomitant with the prevalence of conspiracy theories, external conflict and the risk of terrorism are positively associated with the popularity of conspiratorial thinking across countries. Finally, to ensure robustness and develop a more granular analysis, I interact education with institutional, political and conflict factors and find that higher educational attainments weakens the impact of corruption, external threats and terrorism on the pervasiveness of conspiracy theories.
What can we do to halt the spread of conspiracy theories? Empirical findings presented in this paper-robust to different specifications-underscore the importance of promoting the accumulation of human capital through advanced education, strengthening bureaucratic quality and anti-corruption measures, providing greater transparency in governance and clarity on external threats, and proactively correcting misinformation stand against prevalent conspiracy
theories that corrode social trust, undermine societal institutions, and thereby lead to economic and political instability. Interweaving conspiracy theories is a common practice to explicate unexplained or extraordinary events, especially in times of heightened uncertainty and vulnerability. No doubt conspiracy theories are complex, but identifying the root causes can help us create an environment in which people will be less likely to gravitate toward conspiracist conclusions. A country where more people have advanced education to understand the fundamental origins of domestic and international events, where more people have greater influence over socioeconomic and political developments, and where more people do not see the world through a tribalistic prism, will be less susceptible to conspiratorial mentality.
Appendix Table A1. List of Conspiracy Theories
The US Government knowingly helped to make the 9/11 terrorist attacks happen in America on 11 September, 2001
The truth about the harmful effects of vaccines is being deliberately hidden from the public
there is a single group of people who secretly control events and rule the world together
The idea of man-made global warming is a hoax that was invented to deceive people
Humans have made contact with aliens and this fact has been deliberately hidden from the public
The AIDS virus was created and spread around the world on purpose by a secret group or organisation
The official account of the Nazi Holocaust is a lie and the number of Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II has been exaggerated on purpose
The 1969 moon landings were faked
Coronavirus is a myth created by some powerful forces, and the virus does not really exist
A secret group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles has taken control of parts of the U.S. Government and mainstream U.S. media
In the 2020 US Presidential Election, certain forces in America stole the election from Donald Trump by committing systemic voter fraud that prevented him from winning
Members of Donald Trump’s election team knowingly worked with the Russian Government to help him win the 2016 US Presidential Election
Source: YouGov-Cambridge Center for Public Opinion Research.
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