Is a Free Trade Agreement More than Merely a Trade Policy? People's Preferences for Free Trade Agreements and the Security Factor

What determines people's preferences regarding trade policy? Existing studies have assumed that people consider trade policy merely trade politics; accordingly, these studies have focused on economic factors, such as benefits to individual or national welfare; ideational factors, such as xenophobia; or domestic political factors. This paper reveals that the international political factor of national security influences ordinary people's preferences for trade policy. While several studies have addressed the effect of the national security factor, they did not persuasively reveal the causal mechanism of the relationship between the national security factor and people's trade preferences. The present study conducted a factorial survey experiment to investigate the causal effect and the causal mechanism of the security factor on people's preferences regarding free trade agreements (FTAs). The results of the experiment conducted in Japan reveal that ordinary people consider the national security factor along the so-called realism path in forming their opinions regarding FTAs.