Expressive voting and political ideology in a laboratory democracy

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. We test the theory of expressive voting in relation to political ideology in a laboratory experiment. After deriving our hypotheses from a decision theoretic model, we examine voting decisions in an experiment in which we use the size of the electorate as the treatment variable. Terms of use: Documents inUsing a Heckman selection model that includes both the electoral participation decision and voting choice decision, we find mixed results for the expressive voting hypothesis. In line with expressive voting, our findings suggest that non-ideological voters are more likely to abstain from voting than ideological voters -especially when the electorate grows large. Concerning the voting choice decision between an equal but inefficient, and an unequal but efficient income distribution the evidence for expressive voting is mixed. We do find that voters with socialist (left wing) preferences behave expressively, but we do not find this effect for voters with capitalist preferences.JEL-Codes: C910, D720.

Complete information pivotal-voter model with asymmetric group size and asymmetric benefits

“…If the increase in m reaches the threshold when m = n 2 (n = 3 and m = 9), the poor has so little at stake that she is nowhere willing to face the cost of voting with positive probability in equilibrium. 22 A further increase in m would still imply p * m = 0 everywhere, and further increases the willingness to vote of the rich (i.e., p * n increases for any given B, and p * n turns positive for greater B's).…”

Voting on Behalf of a Future Generation: A Laboratory Experiment

“…First, in addition to being motivated by tangible outcomes, people also have a tendency to behave in an ethical manner [27]. Research on voting behavior has shown that voters obtain positive utility not only from the outcomes of the elections wherein they participate, but also by using their votes as an expression of their attitudes [28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

Are voters rational?

“…A simple way to explain the empirical patterns of high turnout is to introduce an additional utility component by assuming that voters derive utility from the act of voting itself. This expressive component may include elements such as social identity, civic duty or social pressure (e.g., Schuessler 2000 andWiese andJong-A-Pin 2017). Indeed, there is convincing empirical evidence that such expressive motives matter (e.g., Gerber et al 2008 andFunk 2010).…”