POWRE: Understanding Contribution Choice: Experimental Analyses

Lafayette College, Easton PA

Investigators

Abstract

This research focuses on the strategic choices made by campaign contributors who seek to make donations to winning candidates. In this project, the investigator uses computer experiments to present subjects with a simulated "election" and rewards them for contributing to the winner. The main theses investigated involve the use of information and the extent and range of learning. What cues do subjects use to identify winners, and how effective are they at doing so? The primary dependent variable is the performance of the human subjects in solving the contribution problem. The manipulated experimental conditions include the number of candidates, the number of (simulated) contributors, the predictability of the simulated contributors' "decisions," and the payoff subjects receive for selecting the winner. Research into the choices made by campaign contributors lags behind that on other political actors such as voters and candidates. Despite recent advances in this area, the discipline knows relatively little about why individuals choose to contribute to candidates, how they choose candidates to support, and what impact money has on elections and policy. Although research into contribution choice can be informed by the literature on vote choice, the decisions are not analogous. Unlike votes, campaign contributions are fungible, that is, they can be applied to many other purposes. Money not "invested" in (or spent on) a candidate can be "invested" (or spent) elsewhere. Contributors can give to multiple candidates, or even to every candidate. Unlike votes, contributions can be made at different times, i.e. early or late in the campaign. The question underlying the research is essential to understanding the decisions of political actors: how do people make strategic choices? This POWRE grant provides the investigator valuable resources with which to further her professional development. It enables her to advance her skills in computer experimentation, an area of the discipline in which women are significantly underrepresented. It also enables her to undertake this major research project and to involve students in her research as she begins her first tenure-track position. Completing this research will, in turn, suggest additional avenues for investigating the choices of campaign contributors, a central focus of the PI's research agenda. In short, this POWRE grant allows the PI to make significant progress on her research agenda at a critical stage in her professional development.