CMIR Seminar Series | Fairness, merit, and effectiveness: How ethnic minorities evaluate DEI policies in recruitment

Research on attitudes towards diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies has overwhelmingly examined the majority group in the US context. Far less is known about how the intended beneficiaries of such policies evaluate them. We address this gap with a paired conjoint experiment fielded in 2026 with 2,834 ethnic-minority respondents in Britain, the Netherlands and Spain, yielding 17,004 policy evaluations. Hypothetical recruitment policies varied on three randomised attributes: the policy instrument (blind applications, diversity training, diversity and inclusion committees, targeted recruitment, tie-break rules), the justification offered for it (instrumental or moral), and the level of support it enjoyed among the firm's incumbent managers. Each pair was judged on four separate criteria, namely effectiveness at increasing minority representation, fairness, quality of the resulting hires, and benefit to people like the respondent.

 

Minority respondents reproduce the prescriptiveness gradient documented among majorities: blind applications are the most favoured instrument and tie-break rules the least, reducing the probability of being judged fairer and more meritocratic. Crucially, however, this ordering reverses across evaluative criteria. Targeted recruitment is seen as the single most effective instrument for raising minority representation even though it is judged substantially less fair than blind applications, which suggests that respondents distinguish what is fair from what works. Anticipated managerial opposition depresses support roughly twice as strongly as managerial endorsement raises it, while the justification attached to a policy barely matters. These preferences vary systematically with ethnic identification, political orientation and, above all, with beliefs about why minorities are underrepresented.