Acceptable or not? Understanding attitudes towards citizens’ discrimination against frontline workers

Research shows that frontline workers often discriminate based on race or ethnicity. However, citizens can also display discriminatory behavior—for instance, by requesting service only from workers of the same ethnic or religious background. This discrimination exercised by citizens towards frontline employees remains underexplored. Drawing on studies of citizen–state interactions, discrimination, and political ideology, we investigate when the public finds such requests acceptable. Using a vignette survey experiment with 2,067 Danish citizens, we find that language-based requests are seen as more acceptable than those based on religion. Political ideology significantly shapes these views: right-leaning individuals are more accepting when the requester is from the ethnic majority, while left-leaning individuals are more accepting when the requester is from an ethnic minority. While these single-country findings may not generalize beyond one-to-one interactions characterized by high intimacy, they shed light on how ideology influences public attitudes toward ethnically motivated service preferences and highlight the need to further examine citizen-driven discrimination in public service settings.