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WHO VOTES EXPRESSIVELY, AND WHY? EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE
Author(s) -
Etang Alvin,
Fielding David,
Knowles Stephen
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
bulletin of economic research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.227
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8586
pISSN - 0307-3378
DOI - 10.1111/boer.12033
Subject(s) - selfishness , variation (astronomy) , voting , social psychology , microeconomics , economics , psychology , political science , physics , law , politics , astrophysics
Experiments have shown that some people behave more altruistically in collective decisions than they do in individual ones, which could be interpreted as an ‘expressive voting’ effect. However, there is substantial variation in the behaviour of experimental participants. We conduct experiments to explore the reasons for this variation, and find that certain characteristics are sometimes associated with a propensity for expressive voting. However, the strength of these effects depends on the ordering of individual and collective choices. The ‘warm glow’ of expressive voting can influence subsequent individual decisions, and the ‘cold shower’ of individual selfishness can influence subsequent collective decisions.