Voter Motivation and the Quality of Democratic Choice
- Author(s)
- Lydia Mechtenberg, Jean-Robert Tyran
- Abstract
The efficiency of committee voting and referenda with common-interest issues critically depends on voter motivation, i.e., on voters' willingness to cast an informed vote. If voters are motivated, voting may result in smart choices because of information aggregation but if voters remain ignorant, delegating decision making to an expert may yield better outcomes. We experimentally study a common-interest situation in which we vary voters' information cost and the competence of the expert. We find that voters are more motivated to collect information than predicted by standard theory and that voter motivation is higher when subjects demand to make choices by voting than when voting is imposed on subjects.
- Organisation(s)
- Vienna Center for Experimental Economics, Department of Economics
- External organisation(s)
- Universität Hamburg, University of Copenhagen, Centre for Economic and Policy Research
- Journal
- Games and Economic Behavior
- Volume
- 116
- Pages
- 241-259
- No. of pages
- 19
- ISSN
- 0899-8256
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2018.12.002
- Publication date
- 01-2019
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 502045 Behavioural economics, 502027 Political economy
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics, Finance
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/f87b7e45-ecf2-4d15-aeb6-05b8620765f6