Space Funding and Geopolitical Competition: How Information Shapes Public Support

Research output: Preprint/Documentation/Report › Working paper

Abstract

The space sector has remained central to geopolitics since the end of the Cold War, leading to an increase in national space spending worldwide. This study investigates how public support for space funding is influenced by information about (i) national space spending, (ii) the spending of geopolitical rivals, and (iii) the roles of private companies. We collected data from 2,135 citizens from the nine most important spacefaring nations. When informing them about their national space budgets, we find an increased willingness to increase their national space budget. However, information about high spending from rivals significantly reduces support for space budgets. When it comes to solving geopolitically relevant tasks, citizens show no preference for traditional space agencies over private companies, except in the US, where NASA receives stronger support than private firms. The findings serve as a caution to policymakers against using comparative rhetoric, as it may inadvertently reduce public support for space funding.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jan 2025

Publication series

SeriesCESifo Working Papers
Volume11607
ISSN1617-9595
No renderer: customAssociatesEventsRenderPortal,dk.atira.pure.api.shared.model.researchoutput.WorkingPaper

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-0576-7759/work/177361333
ORCID /0000-0003-4566-3986/work/177361340

Keywords

Keywords

  • geopolitics, space race, contest theory, policy prefe, limited information, public economics