Non-consequentialist voting

Moses Shayo and Alon Harel ()

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2012, vol. 81, issue 1, 299-313

Abstract: Standard theory assumes that voters’ preferences over actions (voting) are induced by their preferences over electoral outcomes (policies, candidates). But voters may also have non-consequentialist (NC) motivations: they may care about how they vote even if it does not affect the outcome. When the likelihood of being pivotal is small, NC motivations can dominate voting behavior. To examine the prevalence of NC motivations, we design an experiment that exogenously varies the probability of being pivotal yet holds constant other features of the decision environment. We find a significant effect, consistent with at least 12.5 percent of subjects being motivated by NC concerns.

Keywords: Expressive voting; Social preferences; Extended preferences; Elections; Democracy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D63 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (49)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111002708
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Non-Consequentialist Voting (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:81:y:2012:i:1:p:299-313

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2011.10.021

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().