The Ineffectiveness of Reassuring Signals during Crisis: Evidence from Taiwan

• In Event: Understanding Mass Behavior in Taiwan in a New Era

Abstract

The literature of rationalist signaling holds that reassurance policies can reduce mistrust between adversaries. This idea is rooted in belief updating: perceivers positively update their perceptions of the sender when encountering costly reassurance signals. Yet, could costly reassuring signals alter perceivers’ perceived trustworthiness of the sender during crisis? In this paper, we argue that costly reassurance signals are ineffective in soliciting perceivers’ perception updating of the sender. Perceivers would view costly reassuring signals as not credible and would therefore be less likely to update their perception of the sender in a positive light. We further argue that costly reassuring signals may even backfire when perceivers are individuals who hold hawkish orientations. Amidst a crisis across the Taiwan Strait triggered by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei, we field a survey experiment to examine whether Taiwanese citizens update their perception of China’s trustworthiness if China extends an olive branch. Our findings are threefold. First, Beijing’s costly signals of reassurance do not significantly alter Taiwanese citizens’ perceived trustworthiness of China. Second, doves are more receptive to costly signals than hawks. Third, hawks find China even more untrustworthy if China makes a promise to stop Chinese warplanes and warships’ intrusion over Taiwan in a vignette-based scenario. Our findings suggest that costly signals of reassurance during crisis are ineffective in eliciting a favorable response from the perceiver.

Authors

• Elaine I-lien Lee, Academia Sinica

• Ronan Tse-min Fu, Academia Sinica

• Wei-hao Huang, National sun-yat sen university