The Effects of Identities, Incentives, and Information on Voting

We report on majority voting experiments where subjects are randomly assigned identities in common with a candidate. However, subjects sometimes receive a financial incentive from voting contrary to their identity. We vary the size of the incentive as well as information voters have about the advant...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Journal of politics Vol. 73; no. 2; pp. 558 - 571
Main Authors Bassi, Anna, Morton, Rebecca B., Williams, Kenneth C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York, USA Cambridge University Press 01.04.2011
University of Chicago Press
Subjects
Ballots
Candidates
Effects
Elections
Experiments
Financial incentives
Group identity
Identity
Incentives
Information
Majorities
Minority voters
Nash equilibrium
Political identity
Politics
Social ethics
Voter behavior
Voters
Voting
Voting behavior
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI10.1017/S0022381611000284

Cover

More Information
Summary:We report on majority voting experiments where subjects are randomly assigned identities in common with a candidate. However, subjects sometimes receive a financial incentive from voting contrary to their identity. We vary the size of the incentive as well as information voters have about the advantage of the incentive. We find that subjects are influenced by their assigned identities, and the effect is stronger when voters have less information. Nevertheless, financial incentives reduce this influence when voters have full information. Our results suggest that identity may have an important affect on voter choices in elections where incentives or information are low.
Bibliography:SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 14
ObjectType-Article-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1017/S0022381611000284