Does the Law Affect the Justification of Prostitution? A Natural Experiment on the Impact of European Law Changes on Prostitution Norms.

Abstract

While most evaluations of the effects of prostitution policy focus on externalities such as violence, STDs, or risks of human trafficking, this contribution studies the impact on the public's social norms regarding prostitution. European countries that criminalized the purchase of physical sexual services often explicitly aim to change the public's normative evaluation of prostitution. In the same logic, some expect that legalization or regulation of prostitution would "normalize" prostitution. We tested these conjectures empirically with the help of a multi-case study. We estimate the normative effect of six European cases of national legislative changes in Europe, thus not only diversifying the legal change but also bringing in understudied cases. Legal changes include the criminalization of the purchase of sexual services according to the so-called "Nordic model" (Sweden, Norway, and France), a passage to a regulated regime (the Netherlands), and the decriminalization of selling sex (Slovenia and Spain). The evolution of the normative acceptance of prostitution was measured with European Values Study and World Values Study data collected from the 1990s until 2008. The effects were modeled through a difference-in-differences approach combined with a matching procedure. The results indicated that criminalization indeed decreased the public's acceptance of the phenomenon of prostitution. At the same time, decriminalization has effects in both directions: In Spain, norms have become more liberal, while in Slovenia, they have become more judgmental. This more judgmental shift also occurred after the regulatory turn in the Netherlands. Factors related to the specific dynamic of the public debate around the law change probably drive these contextual differences.