As part of his Marie Jahoda Visiting Fellowship (2022), Zhen Im investigated ‘Crosspressured citizens – perceptions towards grand societal challenges and their implications’.
Citizens are increasingly confronted by a variety of overlapping challenges. They include demographic ageing, digitalisation and automation, and climate change to name just a few. This fellowship focused on collaboratively designing a cross-national survey across 10 countries to explore how citizens navigate these different grand societal challenges. The survey will provide a more nuanced and integrated understanding of the public’s policy priorities and their policy preferences across these different but often interlinked challenges. If policy design is inadequately aligned with the public’s demands, there is a potential of unintended political backlash.