Which meanings do people ascribe to their stances on official development assistance?

The research field aiming to understand the public’s attitudes towards official development assistance (ODA) has been characterized as “a mile wide and an inch deep”. Within this research I aim to enrich the ODA literature by taking an innovative meaning-centered approach to understand people’s stances on ODA: I examine different belief systems through which different people ascribe meaning to their stances on ODA. To uncover the belief systems, I take an inductive approach by applying the state-of-the-art method of Correlational Class Analysis to unique and high-quality survey data representative of the Dutch population (n = 2068). I uncover three different belief systems through which people ascribe meaning to their stances on ODA: a specific belief system in which people focus on improvement and growth within recipient countries when motivating their stances on ODA; an encompassing belief system in which people additionally take broader world affairs into consideration; and an isolated belief system in which people do not ascribe a clear meaning to their stances on ODA. In terms of the social bases of the belief systems, especially people’s education and their political party and media consumption preferences appear relevant. My findings indicate that half of the Dutch population do not ascribe a clear meaning to their stances on ODA, future research should examine whether similar patterns exist within different donor countries. Moreover, other avenues for future research and implications for scholarly debates on the public’s attitudes towards ODA are discussed.