Understanding popular support for market-restrictive housing regulation : a study of folk-economic reasoning in Germany

Abstract

This paper examines how market context and supply-side market actors are associated with popular support for market-restrictive housing regulation in Germany. Using a quota-based vignette survey, we compare rental and sales contexts and private owners and real estate companies as supply-side actors. Preferences for market-restrictive housing regulation aimed at protecting the demand side of the market are stronger in rental than in sales contexts and stronger when the actor is framed as a real estate company rather than a private owner.Perceived power asymmetry and supply skepticism show related but more differentiated patterns, whereas zero-sum thinking is widespread but comparatively insensitive to the experimental frames. By focusing on Germany as a rental-oriented, regulation-heavy housing market, the study extends the predominantly U.S.-focused literature on housing-related folk-economic reasoning and clarifies which associations are especially salient under recurring rental dependence. From a business-economics perspective, the findings show how public moral-economic reasoning may matter indirectly for firms by strengthening political demand for market restrictions in a highly salient sector.