The framing of elections: cooperation vs. competition

Carlos Alós-Ferrer (), Michele Garagnani and Jaume García-Segarra
Additional contact information
Carlos Alós-Ferrer: Lancaster University
Michele Garagnani: University of Melbourne
Jaume García-Segarra: University Jaume I

Social Choice and Welfare, 2025, vol. 65, issue 2, No 4, 363-385

Abstract: Abstract We show that framing an election as a “competition” compared to “cooperation” reduces the chances that egalitarian alternatives will win under Plurality Voting, but not under Approval Voting. Individual voting behavior shows that the effect is mainly driven by voters who switch to their selfishly payoff-maximizing alternatives under a competitive framework, but only when those are also payoff-efficient (in terms of sum of payoffs for the group). This shift does not happen for voters whose payoff-maximizing alternatives are not payoff-efficient, or even if a majority of voters are better off under the payoff-efficient alternative. This suggests that voters are more likely to switch to selfish payoff-maximizing alternatives under a competitive frame if they can (self-)justify the switch in terms of the common good.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00355-024-01580-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:sochwe:v:65:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s00355-024-01580-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... c+theory/journal/355

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-024-01580-9

Access Statistics for this article

Social Choice and Welfare is currently edited by Bhaskar Dutta, Marc Fleurbaey, Elizabeth Maggie Penn and Clemens Puppe

More articles in Social Choice and Welfare from Springer, The Society for Social Choice and Welfare Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().