How do consumers respond to female electoral victories? Evidence from Indian state elections

Vishal Narayan () and Ishani Tewari
Additional contact information
Vishal Narayan: University of Connecticut School of Business
Ishani Tewari: Curry College

Marketing Letters, 2025, vol. 36, issue 3, No 6, 385-401

Abstract: Abstract Female political leadership is associated with increased investments in health and education, and lower corruption. However, social norms and stereotypes favor male leaders globally. This research examines the impact of the gender of leaders who won 1,319 state legislative assembly elections in India, on monthly post-election expenditures of 44,884 households. Identification relies on the occurrence of mixed-gender elections with narrow victory margins. Model estimates reveal that households in districts with more female leaders spend lesser. However, this negative effect is mitigated in rural districts with longstanding reservation for women in local governing bodies, and in districts where at least 10% of elected leaders are women. These results support a mechanism that consumer confidence in female leadership increases with increased exposure to female leaders, in ways that impact household expenditure. These results have implications for consumers faced with female leaders, female politicians, and for the recently passed Women’s Reservation Bill in India.

Keywords: Elections; Gender; Consumption; India; Rural; Exposure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11002-024-09762-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
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:kap:mktlet:v:36:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s11002-024-09762-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... etailsPage=societies

DOI: 10.1007/s11002-024-09762-2

Access Statistics for this article

Marketing Letters is currently edited by Joel Steckel and Peter Golder

More articles in Marketing Letters from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().