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Visibility and Sanctions: The Social Norm of Voting in the Lab

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Voting Experiments

Abstract

Theories of voter turnout pay increasing attention to ethical and social motives of voting, yet the empirical foundations of such perspectives are still scarce. In this chapter, we present the results of a laboratory experiment, conducted in two different countries, in which we manipulate the social conditions under which the elections take place. We find that both visibility and the possibility of administering and receiving sanctions boost voter participation by seven or eight percentage points. We also show that voters are willing to punish non-voters at a cost to themselves one third of the time and that receiving a sanction for non-voting increases the likelihood of voting in the next round by about eight percentage points. Overall, the results are consistent with a social norm model of voting.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, the most frequent motivation people report for voting in qualitative studies is the belief that voting is a civic duty (Blais 2000, 104). At the individual level, self-reported civic duty is a strong predictor of voting (e.g. Opp 2001). Furthermore, an internalized sense of civic duty motivates political participation throughout the life course. Teenagers socialized in high-turnout communities vote at high rates much later in life even after they have moved to low-turnout communities (Campbell 2006).

  2. 2.

    Punishment games have been extensively used in behavioral economics to study whether norms such as food sharing or contributing resources to a common pool exist (Camerer and Fehr 2002; Ostrom 2000). This literature has shown that a large number of people are willing to sanction players who violate normative behavior even when doing so is not individually rational and that sanctions increase the provision of public goods (Fehr et al. 2002; Fehr and Fischbacher 2004; Fehr and Gächter 2002). Moral emotions, such as anger at cheaters, rather than rational calculations, are thought to motivate sanctioning behavior (Ostrom 2000).

  3. 3.

    z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Readymade Economic Experiments) is a software for experimental economics. (http://www.iew.uzh.ch/ztree/index.php).

  4. 4.

    The payment matrix depicted four situations: voting and winning (8 – 2 = 6 points), voting and losing (0 – 2 = –2 points), abstaining and winning (8 – 0 = 8 points), abstaining and losing (0 – 0 = 0). Though not explicitly said, this setting makes abstention the most attractive option. We wanted to keep participation rates reasonably low so the stimuli had room to act and increase participation, avoiding ceiling effects.

  5. 5.

    Subjects were randomly re-matched in each period (“stranger matching”) in order to avoid matters related to reputation and reciprocity (Andreoni and Croson 2008) as well as collusion, retaliation, and spite (Baik et al. 2013).

  6. 6.

    All these decisions were made simultaneously and independently. When a participant decided to withdraw (or not) two points from another participant, she did not know whether she herself was being ‘punished’ or not. The identity of the sanctioner was not revealed to the potential sanctionee.

  7. 7.

    In fact, from a strict instrumental perspective, the punisher’s interest is that turnout be as low as possible, since this increases the probability that her vote will be pivotal.

  8. 8.

    We refer the reader to the Appendix. A table summarizes the sequence of actions and interventions that took place in every round within every group.

  9. 9.

    Mean turnout is higher in Montreal (57 %) than in Barcelona (41 %). This is likely due to the fact that the participants in Barcelona were to a greater extent economics students. See Marwell and Ames (1981) on the greater propensity of economics students to free ride.

  10. 10.

    In summary, we had 2 cities, 4 session or groups in each city (total = 8 sessions), 20 rounds or elections per session (total = 160 rounds or elections), 20 individuals in each session (total = 160 individuals), 3200 “elections” observations (160 elections per each individual). There are three series of elections within each session: benchmark (six rounds or elections, i.e. 1–6), visibility (six rounds or elections, i.e. 7–12) and sanctions (eight rounds or elections, i.e. 13–20).

  11. 11.

    Additional tests show that there are not heterogeneous results of the treatments in Montreal and Barcelona.

  12. 12.

    Punishment was slightly more frequent in Montreal (35 %) than in Barcelona (29 %) but the difference is not statistically significant.

  13. 13.

    There are no significant differences between Montreal and Barcelona with respect to anti-social or hypocritical punishment either.

  14. 14.

    We did test for potential differential effects of punishment in Montreal and Barcelona with an interaction model. The impact of punishment among previous abstainers appears to be the same. It is only in Barcelona that (anti-social) punishment of voters seems to depress turnout.

  15. 15.

    See Burden et al. (2014) who show that early voting is actually associated with lower turnout, possibly because it reduces the civic significance of elections.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Barcelona Institute of International Studies, Barcelona, Spain

    Aina Gallego

  2. Université de Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Carol Galais, Jean-Michel Lavoie & André Blais

  3. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain

    Marc Guinjoan

Authors
  1. Aina Gallego
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  2. Carol Galais
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  3. Marc Guinjoan
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  4. Jean-Michel Lavoie
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  5. André Blais
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Aina Gallego .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Québec, Canada

    André Blais

  2. Paris School of Economics, Paris, France

    Jean-François Laslier

  3. Toulouse School of Economics, Toulouse, France

    Karine Van der Straeten

Appendix: Order of the Actions That Take Place Throughout the Experiment in Each of the Eight Groups

Appendix: Order of the Actions That Take Place Throughout the Experiment in Each of the Eight Groups

Round

Sequence

1st

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

Previously: explanation of the rules and incentives. Slide presentation. Each respondent answers a series of questions about their socio-demographic characteristics

1

Announcement of the party they have been randomly assigned to

Participants decide whether they vote or not:

Participants learn the results of the election

   

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

2

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

   

3

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

   

4

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

   

5

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

   

6

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

   

TREATMENT 1: Participants are asked to get up, introduce themselves, and stick their number to their chair. They are told that their voting behavior will no longer be anonymous

7

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

A list with the numbers of voters/abstainers comes on the screen:

LIST

  

8

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

  

9

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

  

10

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

  

11

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

  

12

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

  

TREATMENT 2: Participants are told that they will have the opportunity to punish a random, anonymous participant

13

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

The behaviour of an anonymous participant comes on the screen. They decide whether or not to punish him/her:

PUNISH

They are told whether or not another anonymous participant has punished them

PUNISHED

14

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

15

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

16

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

17

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

18

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

19

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

20

PARTY ASSIGNMENT

VOTE

RESULTS

LIST

PUNISH

PUNISHED

Questionnaire on attitudes

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Gallego, A., Galais, C., Guinjoan, M., Lavoie, JM., Blais, A. (2016). Visibility and Sanctions: The Social Norm of Voting in the Lab. In: Blais, A., Laslier, JF., Van der Straeten, K. (eds) Voting Experiments. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40573-5_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40573-5_7

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