Information Acquisition, Ideology and Turnout:Theory and Evidence from Britain

Valentino Larcinese

STICERD - Political Economy and Public Policy Paper Series from Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE

Abstract: The amount of political information that voters decide to acquire during anelectoral campaign depends, among other things, on prior ideological beliefsabout parties and/or candidates. Voters that are ex ante indifferent about thecandidates attach little value to information because they perceive thatvoting itself will have little value. Voters that are ex ante very ideologicalalso attach little value to information because they think that the news willhardly change their opinion. Thus, high incentives to be informed can befound at intermediate levels of ideological strength. Moreover, the impact ofincreased political knowledge on turnout is asymmetric: New informationincrease the probability of voting of indifferent voters but decrease that ofvery ideological voters. These results are derived within a decisiontheoretical model of information acquisition and turnout that combines theRiker-Ordeshook (1968) approach to voting behaviour with the Becker(1965) approach to "personal production functions". These predictions arethen tested on survey data from the 1997 British Election Study. Ourempirical findings are compatible with all the results of the theoreticalexercise.

Keywords: elections; turnout; political knowledge; information; ideology; partisanship; political participation; mass media. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Information Acquisition, Ideology and Turnout: Theory and Evidence From Britain (2009)
Working Paper: Information acquisition, ideology and turnout: theory and evidence from Britain (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:stipep:18

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