The effect of perceived responsibility on stigma towards people experiencing food insecurity and accessing food support: an experimental vignette study

Students are disproportionately at risk of food insecurity, and subsequent poor physical and mental health and low academic performance. However, students may not access food support due to associated stigma. Stigma towards people experiencing food insecurity is thought to partly originate from negative media stories, which highlight the driving role of internal responsibility, despite research suggesting that external factors are more culpable. This pre-registered (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/9X7M2) online experiment aimed to investigate how perceived responsibility influences stigma towards individuals experiencing food insecurity and accessing food support services. Participants (N=322, N=106 self-reporting as food insecure), were randomly assigned to one of three conditions requiring them to read a bogus newspaper article framing food insecurity and food support access as originating from (1) perceived internal responsibility; (2) perceived external responsibility; or a (3) control article with no responsibility framing. Then participants read a standard vignette regarding a fictional character who was experiencing food insecurity and accessing a food bank, before completing measures of stigma towards the fictional vignette character. No statistically significant effects of perceived responsibility on stigma towards the fictional character were found. Future research might explore the research aims using repeated exposures to media stories and behavioural over self-report measures of stigma.