cities, and that the attitudes in the two context types are shaped by different sets of factors, with, for example, concerns about economic contribution being strikingly greater in urban areas and security concerns greater in camp-like contexts.

# **5.2 Refugee Perceptions of Hosts**

In Table 6, we use the full cross-country sample to study the relationship between refugeehost interactions and refugees’ trust in hosts. The dependent variable is a dummy variable indicating whether the refugee respondents trust their host population. In Columns 1-3, we report the results of OLS regressions with country-, neighbourhood-, and household fixed effects respectively. Columns 4-6 report the IV estimates, instrumenting the interaction index with the average interaction index among other household members and neighbours. As before, we consider three sets of control variables: a long list defined in Table A.4 (Column 4) in the Appendix, a list selected using the double LASSO procedure (Column 5), and no control variables except the averages of the perception index among other household members and host households living in the same community (Column 6). We highlight three findings.

First, the relationship between interactions and perceptions is also positive and significant also among refugees, but less robust. The OLS regressions indicate that a one standarddeviation increase in the interaction index is associated with a 13 to 17 percentage point increase in the likelihood of reporting that host nationals are trustworthy. When limiting the analysis to the Uganda sample, OLS regressions still point to a positive and significant association between refugee-host interactions and trust in Kampala, but not in Nakivale (Table A.7 in the Appendix). However, the cross-country IV regressions in Table 6 columns 4-6 indicate that this positive association in the OLS is not robust, as the coefficient of the interaction index is close to zero and not statistically significant. However, we do have some concerns about these IV specifications.<sup>22</sup> The IV results for Uganda are also complicated to interpret (Table A.8 in the Appendix), first because the proportion of refugees in the enumeration area appear to be a weaker instrument here,<sup>23</sup> and second because we find some evidence that the instruments might not be exogenous in this context. These issues imply that the results of the refugee sample IV regressions should be interpreted very cautiously. If anything, IV results suggest that higher refugee-host interactions does not lead to more trust in hosts.

Second, we observe that other correlates of refugee opinions mirror the main findings

> 22The first-stage of the IV regression is very strong (Effective F-statistic _>_ 300) and we cannot reject the null hypothesis of the Sargan-Hansen J test that the instruments are valid. Still, the p-value of the Sargan-Hansen J test is close to the critical threshold of 0.1 when control variables are selected using the double Lasso procedure, indicating that results should be interpreted cautiously.

> 23For refugees in Uganda, OLS regressions suggest that the degree of interaction with host populations does not depend much on the proportion of refugees versus hosts living nearby. Instead, both in the Uganda sample and in the full sample, the most important predictors of refugee-host interactions are having a job and speaking English or the local language.

29