In recent years, European societies have been shaped by multi-crises omnipresent in the public discourses. Climate change, demographic aging, migration flows, refugee influx, and a changing world economy are only some elements of the multitude of structural challenges our societies are confronted with. Public discourses in Europe and other Western democracies suffer from continuous political polarization. In such conflictual times it is fundamental for democracies to enable its citizens to understand the living realities of their social environment and also potential future paths their societies and states could develop along. This study uses a novel methodological approach to simulate complex real-world socio-economic environments by letting participants experience personal living realities as a citizen of a fictional state. They make decisions as a person living through fictional situations embedded into a coherent narrative of an everyday life.

We apply this narrative in a pre-registered experimental case study to evaluate how people react to such a coherent narrative setup. Substantively, we test propositions grounded in a social contract model, which explains citizens’ behaviour towards the state within the context of their perceived reciprocal relationships between the state, other citizens, and themselves. We model how citizens behave if they perceive the social contract as being broken by the state, because it does not provide services of a decent quality anymore. By doing so, participants personally experience the consequences of deteriorating public services as a result of increasing pressure on public institutions, such as those which Western democracies are currently confronted with.

Using an online vignette environment within a virtual state we call Novaland, we examine how variations in public-service quality and corruption affect political solidarity in a pre-registered experimental cases study. We utilize a text- and image-based setup within an online survey. Participants are confronted with vignettes embedded into a coherent narrative of an everyday life in the fictional country. Participants make positive, negative, or negative-and-corrupt public service delivery experiences and engage in everyday activities, ensuring immersive and attentive participation. We also measure participants survey-taking behaviour and post-experimental attitude changes conditioned on their experimental treatment.

Methodologically, our findings underscore the potential of the novel virtual state methodology to simulate complex real-world environments. By experiencing a fictional everyday life within a coherent narrative framework, participants gain first-hand impressions of the living realities of different societal groups or within a different economic and political environment. The virtual state approach might thus contribute to increase understanding and solidarity within European democracies. We discuss its potential for education and policy development. Substantively, we show that support for domain-specific state spending increases under poor service delivery, but support increases less when corruption is present besides poor service delivery alone. This support seems not to translate into a demand for more general welfare spending. Political trust declines over time when quality is low, especially when corruption is present. Our findings underscore the importance of equitable and efficient public services in maintaining both political solidarity and trust. As public service quality declines in many European states, our study suggests that unmet public expectations risk eroding political solidarity in public domains and political trust.

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