Conformity Preferences and Information Gathering Effort in Collective Decision Making

Abstract

Our study concerns a collective decision-making model for the collection of information from two voters. Both voters, who tend to make the same voting choices because of their conformity preferences, collect information about the consequences of a project and then vote on the project. We focus on an informative equilibrium in which voters vote informatively using pure strategies. This is a symmetric Nash equilibrium. Our result is interesting as it shows that nonconformist voters exert less effort from a social perspective because of a positive externality that results in the free-rider problem, while conformity preferences can help to improve the sum of the voters’ expected payoffs from the social perspective. This is because conformity preferences may alleviate the free-rider problem associated with coordination (making the same vote). Specifically, conformity preferences give special importance to the correlation between voters’ signals, even if this correlation is unrelated to the accuracy of the signals. Furthermore, we present the exact conformity preference level which helps voters to exert an optimal effort level that maximizes the sum of the voters’ expected payoffs compared to the nonconformist case. In addition, we graphically illustrate comparative statics on effort levels in informative equilibria.

Positional and conformist effects in voluntary public good provision

“…The bandwagon effect—or conformism—occurs when the agent seeks to follow the consumption behavior of others; the snob effect, contrarily, refers to the agent's desire for exclusiveness. Following this interpretation we will define conformity as the act of changing behavior to match the behavior of others; see, for example, Ding (2017). On the other hand, snob agents denoted here simply as positional agents, wish to behave better than their peers.…”

Voter conformism and inefficient policies

“…Public polls are undercounting Republicans, says Miller, the Trump political adviser, and the President's supporters are more enthusiastic about voting by a 2-to-1 ratio" (Time magazine, August 17, 2020).10 In economics,Zafar (2011) experimentally highlights that informative conformity matters for decision-making, in the shape of learning about the descriptive norm (i.e., what others are doing) Grodner and Kniesner (2006). study the effect of normative conformity on wages and labor supply Ding (2017). models normative conformity as the desire to vote like the majority when voting on collective decisionmaking under the unanimity rule.…”