Do voters prefer gender stereotypic candidates? evidence from a conjoint survey experiment in Japan

Abstract

The striking under-representation of women in Japan has been partly attributed to gender stereotypes and prejudice toward female leadership among voters. We examine whether and to what extent candidates get rewarded or punished when they deviate from the behavioral expectations associated with their gender roles and images. Our conjoint experiment results in Japan demonstrate that not only are female candidates disadvantaged compared to their male counterparts, but also that they could lose support when they diverge from gender-based behavioral expectations. Our findings suggest that female candidates face a difficult dilemma in that they must weigh the cost of losing support for failing to conform to gender-based expectations, against the general loss of support they would incur for conforming to these expectations.

How voters choose one out of many: a conjoint analysis of the effects of endorsements on candidate choice

“…Our results show that endorsements from VAAs and from family and close friends have the expected positive effects on favorability. Furthermore, the effect sizes are in line with known predictors of favorability such as candidate gender, educational attainment, and political experience (Franchino and Zucchini 2015;Marx and Schumacher 2018;Ono and Yamada 2020). The only candidate characteristic that is clearly more important than others is the ideological distance between candidate and respondent, as expected considering previous research that shows the strong effects of partisanship (Kirkland and Coppock 2018;Breitenstein 2019).…”

“…Conjoint analysis makes it possible to examine the effects of multiple traits on candidate choice (Franchino and Zucchini 2015; Kirkland and Coppock 2018; Marx and Schumacher 2018; Breitenstein 2019). Furthermore, since it is not necessary to ask respondents directly for their preferences on the given attributes, this technique minimizes problems with social desirability bias, which can present a challenge when examining attitudes and preferences in surveys (Ono and Yamada 2020;Breitenstein 2019). Conjoint experiments also approximate reallife effects and therefore minimize potential problems with external validity (Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Yamamoto 2015).…”

How do voters choose one out of many? The effect of endorsements on candidate choice

“…show that endorsements from VAAs and from family and close friends have the expected positive effects on favorability. Furthermore, the effect sizes are in line with known predictors of favorability such as candidate gender, educational attainment, and political experience (Franchino and Zucchini, 2015;Marx and Schumacher, 2018;Ono and Yamada, 2018). The only candidate characteristic that is clearly more important than others is the ideological distance between candidate and respondent, as expected considering previous research that shows the strong effects of partisanship (Breitenstein, 2019;Kirkland and Coppock, 2018).…”

“…Conjoint analysis makes it possible to examine the effects of multiple traits on candidate choice (Franchino and Zucchini, 2015;Marx and Schumacher, 2018;Kirkland and Coppock, 2018;Breitenstein, 2019). Furthermore, since it is not necessary to ask respondents directly for their preferences on the given attributes, this technique minimizes problems with social desirability bias, which can present a challenge when examining attitudes and preferences in surveys (Ono and Yamada, 2018;Breitenstein, 2019). Conjoint experiments also approximate real-life effects and therefore minimize potential problems with external validity (Hainmueller et al, 2015).…”

Do Voters Judge the Performance of Female and Male Politicians Differently? Experimental Evidence from the United States and Australia

“…We use a conjoint experiment to test our hypotheses in two countries, the United States and Australia. The vast majority of studies on gender stereotypes focus on the United States (but see Herrick and Sapieva 1998;Mo 2015;Ono 2018). By running similar experiments in two different countries, we can begin to assess the generalizability of the findings.…”