The Cultural Premium: How Cultural Distance, Economic Contributions and Value Alignment Shape Immigration Attitudes - Elaheh Fatemipour and Priyama Majumdar

We study the preferences of native citizens over immigrants’ cultural and economic characteristics. Natives generally value immigrants’ economic contributions, but many also hold concerns about the cultural distance between their countries of origin and the host society. We examine whether natives are willing to forgo economic benefits in favour of immigrants from culturally close countries of origin. Crucially, we also investigate how this trade-off changes when immigrants from culturally distant origins are described as holding values aligned with those prevalent in the host country. This comparison allows us to distinguish between two mechanisms: whether cultural origin primarily serves as a signal of immigrants’ personal values under incomplete information, or whether it carries an independent effect of its own.

We run an online experiment with a representative UK sample, presenting participants with hypothetical immigrant profiles. The profiles vary along two key dimensions: the cultural distance of the immigrant’s country of origin from the UK — captured by differences in attitudes towards gender roles, religion, and democracy — and the immigrant’s economic contribution, proxied by income and tax payments. These cultural dimensions are those on which prevailing attitudes in the UK diverge most from those in major immigrant-sending countries, according to World Values Survey data.

Through these scenarios, we measure the cultural premium: the additional income an immigrant from a culturally distant origin must earn, relative to an immigrant from a culturally close origin, to be evaluated equally favourably. By randomly informing some participants that the distant-origin immigrant holds values similar to those in the UK, we test how much the cultural premium decreases under information on value alignment. We use a series of follow-up questions to elicit natives’ beliefs about immigrants from culturally distant origins — what values they think these immigrants held upon arrival in the UK, how they perceive their ability to socially integrate, and what concerns they have about admitting more immigrants from such backgrounds. These questions enable us to assess how information on distant-origin immigrants’ individual value alignment reshapes perceptions and helps to mitigate cultural concerns.

We conducted our main experiment using a representative sample of the UK, including 1063 UK-born respondents.

Our results show that, when natives are unaware of a distant-origin immigrant’s individual values, they only prefer him to stay in the UK over a close-origin immigrant with similar values if he earns substantially more. Specifically, when the close-origin immigrant’s income is set at £40,000 — close to the minimum Skilled Worker visa threshold — the distant-origin immigrant must earn about £63,000 to be viewed equally favourably. This required income lies above the 85th percentile of the UK employee income distribution and exceeds the legal visa threshold by more than £20,000.

Importantly, when we inform participants that the distant-origin immigrant holds values similar to those in the UK, they require him to earn about £47,000 to be viewed equally favourably to the close-origin immigrant, whose income is set at £40,000. Compared with the case where the distant-origin immigrant’s values are unknown, this result implies that information on value alignment lowers the required income by more than 25 percent and subsequently reduces the cultural premium by around 70 percent. Therefore, natives demand far less in extra earnings once they know a distant-origin immigrant shares UK values. Yet the premium does not disappear: on average, respondents still require him to earn at least £7,000 more than the close-origin immigrant, indicating that cultural origin retains an independent effect.

Our follow-up questions reveal that respondents generally assume immigrants from culturally distant countries arrive with, and continue to hold, the values of their country of origin, even after years of residence in the UK. When the distant-origin immigrant’s personal values are not specified, respondents on average assign more than a 65% probability that he retains his origin-country values, and most cite cultural concerns as their main reservation about having immigrants from culturally distant origins stay in the UK. Providing information on value alignment reduces such concerns — mentioned around 35 percent less often than when values are unknown — and increases optimism about distant-origin immigrants’ social integration in the UK. Yet even when told that a distant-origin immigrant currently holds UK-aligned values that differ from those in his country of origin, most respondents assume he arrived with origin-country views and faced challenges integrating into UK society upon arrival. They therefore interpret current alignment as a signal of assimilation rather than pre-migration similarity. Crucially, natives reward this perceived assimilation, accepting the immigrant at lower income levels and evaluating his profile more favourably.

The cultural premium varies by political leaning. When the distant-origin immigrant’s values are unknown, Reform UK supporters require him to earn over £70,000 — above the 90th percentile of the UK employee income distribution — before preferring him, while Labour supporters set the threshold at slightly below £60,000, above the 85th percentile. Information on value alignment lowers income requirements across the political spectrum, but differences persist. Even when two immigrants are otherwise identical and both hold values aligned with the UK, Reform UK supporters still require the distant-origin immigrant to earn about £60,000, above the 85th percentile, whereas Labour supporters retain only a modest premium, with a required income of slightly above £40,000 (see Figure 2). This pattern suggests that for right-leaning respondents, cultural origin exerts a strong independent effect, whereas for left-leaning respondents it is weaker and functions mainly as a signal of immigrants’ individual values.

Finally, we examine whether the patterns found in hypothetical scenarios persist in decisions involving real immigrants and real-world consequences. We recruit actual immigrants online whose cultural backgrounds mirror our scenarios, and ask respondents to decide who, between a close-origin and a distant-origin immigrant, should receive information on legal support for staying in the UK. Respondents also choose how to allocate a monetary bonus between them, with a random subset of decisions implemented. We find that revealing a distant-origin immigrant’s UK-aligned values significantly increases natives’ willingness to provide legal assistance for settlement and to allocate a larger share of the bonus. We also implement several follow-up designs, confirming that the results are robust to alternative design features.

Our analysis of Wave 7 of the World Values Survey (2017–2022) shows that fewer than 30 percent of immigrants from culturally distant countries in the UK hold values dissimilar to those in the UK on gender roles, religion, and democracy. Yet natives across the political spectrum assign a probability above 60 percent that a distant-origin immigrant retains origin-country values, with the strongest beliefs on the right. Although the World Values Survey sample is small (fewer than 100 observations) and should be interpreted cautiously, the findings align with prior evidence that natives systematically overstate immigrants’ cultural distance.

Our results show that country of origin strongly influences preferences, largely because it (often inaccurately) proxies immigrants’ own values. These findings matter for policies that seek to maximise the economic benefits of immigration while reducing backlash and promoting social cohesion. Raising income thresholds — an approach used by the UK government in recent years to control immigration — is unlikely to address immigration concerns unless set so high that the country may forgo economic gains. By contrast, policies that correct misperceptions, provide credible signals of value alignment and integration, and actively support integration are more likely to reduce public scepticism towards immigration.

We document that natives significantly overestimate the extent to which immigrants from culturally distant origins retain values dissimilar to those prevalent in the UK, and believe that these immigrants hold the values of their country of origin even after several years of residence. We therefore plan to study in more detail the implications of such (mis)perceptions on immigration attitudes. Our work connects to the literature in sociology and psychology on stereotyping, group identity, and bias correction.

The main output of this project is a working paper, which we aim to publish in a peer-reviewed journal.