# Perceived deservingness shapes attitudes toward environmental migrants in rural Bangladesh

## TL;DR

Rural Bangladesh residents are more accepting of climate migrants displaced by erosion than economic migrants, due to perceptions of deservingness.

## Contribution

This study identifies perceived deservingness as a key factor shaping attitudes toward environmental migrants in rural Bangladesh.

## Key findings

- Migrants displaced by riverbank erosion are accepted more than economic migrants by 21 percentage points.
- Shared experience of erosion is associated with increased acceptance, though not statistically significant.
- Moral judgments, rather than resource competition, drive attitudes toward environmental migrants.

## Abstract

As climate change intensifies, internal migration due to extreme climate events is becoming increasingly common in the Global South. Yet, little is known about how rural host communities respond to incoming environmental migrants. Here, we study attitudes toward environmentally displaced people in northern Bangladesh, focusing on perceived deservingness, empathy through shared experience, and exploratory proxy indicators of prior migrant exposure/contact. Using a pre-registered face-to-face survey of 265 rural residents, including a forced-choice conjoint experiment, we assess how migrant characteristics (reason for migration, occupation, religion, distance to origin) affect host community attitudes. We find that migrants displaced by riverbank erosion are more likely to be accepted than economic migrants (by 21%-points, p < 0.01) and face less discrimination based on other characteristics, indicating that deservingness strongly shapes attitudes. Regarding shared experience of erosion, which we propose as a proxy for empathy, models estimated a positive coefficient (13%-points, p = 0.122), hence not supporting, but indicative of a positive association between experiential proximity and greater acceptance of environmental migrants. We find no credible evidence for heterogeneity in migrant acceptance using coarse proxy measures of prior migrant exposure/contact. These results suggest that, even in resource-constrained regions, moral judgments play a central role, and that experiential proximity may be associated with more inclusive attitudes, informing policies for societal resilience under environmental stress.

Migrants displaced by riverbank erosion are more accepted than economic movers, and perceptions of involuntary loss make hosts less sensitive to social differences, based on stated preferences from a survey and choice experiment in rural Bangladesh.