Polling data routinely indicate broad support for the concept of diverse schools, but integration initiatives—both racial and socioeconomic—regularly encounter significant opposition. We leverage a nationally representative survey experiment to provide novel evidence on public support for integration initiatives. Specifically, we present respondents with a hypothetical referendum where we provide information on two policy options for assigning students to schools: (1) a residence-based assignment option and (2) an option designed to achieve stated racial/ethnic or socioeconomic diversity targets, with respondents randomly assigned to the racial/ethnic or socioeconomic diversity option. After calculating public support and average willingness-to-pay, our results demonstrate a clear plurality of the public preferring residence-based assignment to the racial diversity initiative, but a near-even split in support for residence-based assignment and the socioeconomic integration initiative. Moreover, we find that the decline in support for race-based integration, relative to the socioeconomic diversity initiative, is entirely attributable to White and Republican respondents.

轮询数据通常表明对多样化学校概念的广泛支持，但是融合计划（种族和社会经济方面）经常遭到强烈反对。我们利用全国代表性的调查实验为公众对融合计划的支持提供新颖的证据。具体而言，我们为受访者提供了一个假设性的全民投票，其中提供了有关两种将学生分配到学校的政策选择的信息：（1）基于居住的分配选择，以及（2）一种旨在实现既定的种族/种族或社会经济多样性目标的选择，受访者被随机分配到种族/种族或社会经济多样性选项。在计算出公众支持和平均付款意愿之后，我们的研究结果表明，显然有很多公众偏向于基于居民的工作，而不是种族多样性计划，但是支持基于居民的工作和社会经济一体化计划的比例几乎持平。此外，我们发现相对于社会经济多样性倡议，对基于种族的融合的支持下降完全归因于白人和共和党人。