Doctoral Dissertation in Research: Information and Political Participation: Evidence from Field Experiments

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Do people vote for consequentialist reasons, for non-consequentialist reasons, or both? A large body of theoretical research in political economy assumes that individuals vote in order to affect the outcome of an election. In these models, individuals should be more likely to turn out when the election is close. On the other hand, the chances of an individual actually being pivotal in an election is vanishingly small. If consequentialism were the primary motivation for political participation, we should see very low levels of turnout. While researchers have examined observational data, confounds make conclusions from this data difficult. This research uses an experimental methodology in which we test whether informing people about the closeness of the election affects turnout. According to these models, individuals should be more likely to vote when the election is close. If our findings do not support these models, then research might develop models where individuals have non-consequentialist (e.g. emotional, social norm, ...) motivations for political participation. The broader impacts of the study include adding to existing knowledge about "what works" in increasing democratic participation, and in building intellectual bridges between political science and economics.