The legitimacy of a pension system or any social security program depends on its credibility and perceived fairness. In order to gauge this legitimacy, we need to understand the relation between people's knowledge and attitudes. This experimental survey into the role of knowledge and perceptions divided respondents into two groups: the ‘treatment’ group received an information letter about a forthcoming pension reform before they were interviewed, while the control group was interviewed without receiving this ‘treatment’. Comparisons of the responses from the two groups allow us to assess how the level of knowledge and the provision of information affect people's opinions on policy reform. We also consider the patterns of covariation between background factors, people's concerns, and attitudes toward pension reform. The results show that the information letter had a significant impact on subjective but not on the objective level of knowledge. Receiving the information letter improved acceptance and perceptions of the fairness of the reform.

养老金制度或任何社会保障计划的合法性取决于其信誉和可感知的公平性。为了评估这种合法性，我们需要了解人们的知识和态度之间的关系。这项关于知识和观念作用的实验性调查将受访者分为两类：“治疗”组在接受采访之前收到了有关即将进行的养老金改革的信息通知，而对照组则没有接受这种“治疗”。通过对两个小组的回答进行比较，我们可以评估知识水平和信息提供如何影响人们对政策改革的看法。我们还考虑了背景因素，人们的关注以及对养老金改革态度之间的协变模式。结果表明，信息信函对主观知识有显着影响，但对客观知识水平没有显着影响。收到信息通知书可以改善人们对改革公平性的接受程度和看法。