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What motivates bandwagon voting behavior: Altruism or a desire to win?

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  • Morton, Rebecca B.
  • Ou, Kai

Abstract

This paper surveys the literature on psychological and strategic mental processes of bandwagon behavior, discusses the literature of bandwagon behavior in the context of the two different types, bandwagon vote choices and bandwagon abstention effects, and examines the rationality of other-regarding bandwagon vote choices. Key experimental results are reported to investigate the extent that bandwagon behavior can be explained by other-regarding preferences in contrast to a psychological desire to simply support a winner. We find support for purely psychological non-other-regarding bandwagon behavior but primarily when subjects have information about the distribution of voter choices in previous elections but individual choices are private. Interestingly, when voting is public this type of bandwagon behavior disappears and bandwagon behavior that could be other-regrading is much higher. Given that observability increases other-regarding behavior in other contexts, our results suggest that some of the observed bandwagon behavior may be explained by other-regarding preferences as well.

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  • Morton, Rebecca B. & Ou, Kai, 2015. "What motivates bandwagon voting behavior: Altruism or a desire to win?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 224-241.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:poleco:v:40:y:2015:i:pb:p:224-241
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2015.04.009
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    Cited by:

    1. Bernado Moreno & María del Pino Ramos-Sosa & Ismael Rodríguez-Lara, 2016. "Conformity, information and truthful voting," Working Papers 2016-01, Universidad de Málaga, Department of Economic Theory, Málaga Economic Theory Research Center.
    2. Alberto Grillo & Eva Raiber, 2022. "Exit polls and voter turnout in the 2017 French elections," Working Papers hal-03670002, HAL.
    3. Gerling, Lena & Kellermann, Kim Leonie, 2019. "The impact of election information shocks on populist party preferences: Evidence from Germany," CIW Discussion Papers 3/2019, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    4. Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Iannantuoni, Giovanna & Maggian, Valeria, 2019. "Electoral fraud and voter turnout: An experimental study," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 203-219.
    5. Alberto Grillo, 2017. "Risk aversion and bandwagon effect in the pivotal voter model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 465-482, September.
    6. Marco Faravelli & Kenan Kalayci & Carlos Pimienta, 2020. "Costly voting: a large-scale real effort experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 468-492, June.
    7. Leontiou, Anastasia & Manalis, Georgios & Xefteris, Dimitrios, 2023. "Bandwagons in costly elections: The role of loss aversion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 471-490.
    8. Arenas, Andreu, 2016. "Sticky votes," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PA), pages 12-25.
      • Andreu ARENAS, 2016. "Sticky Votes," LIDAM Reprints CORE 2763, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    9. Hager, Anselm & Hensel, Lukas & Hermle, Johannes & Roth, Christopher, 2022. "Group Size and Protest Mobilization across Movements and Countermovements," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 116(3), pages 1051-1066, August.
    10. Roberto Ramos & Carlos Sanz, 2018. "Backing the incumbent in difficult times: the electoral impact of wildfires," Working Papers 1810, Banco de España.
    11. Liu, Yezheng & Ye, Chang & Sun, Jianshan & Jiang, Yuanchun & Wang, Hai, 2021. "Modeling undecided voters to forecast elections: From bandwagon behavior and the spiral of silence perspective," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 461-483.
    12. Bernardo Moreno & María del Pino Ramos-Sosa & Ismael Rodriguez-Lara, 2019. "Conformity and truthful voting under different voting rules," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(2), pages 261-282, August.
    13. Isabel Musse & Rodrigo Schneider, 2023. "The effect of presidential election outcomes on alcohol drinking," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(1), pages 146-162, March.
    14. Felipe R. Durazzo & David Turchick, 2023. "Welfare-improving misreported polls," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(2), pages 523-565, February.
    15. Grillo, Alberto, 2019. "Voter turnout and government's legitimate mandate," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 252-265.
    16. Bahri-Ammari, Nedra & Coulibaly, Daouda & Ben Mimoun, Mohamed Slim, 2020. "The bandwagon luxury consumption in Tunisian case: The roles of independent and interdependent self concept," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 52(C).
    17. Gento Kato, 2020. "When strategic uninformed abstention improves democratic accountability," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 32(3), pages 366-388, July.
    18. Sjoerd B Stolwijk & Andreas RT Schuck, 2019. "More interest in interest: Does poll coverage help or hurt efforts to make more young voters show up at the ballot box?," European Union Politics, , vol. 20(3), pages 341-360, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bandwagon behavior; Majority voting; Other-regarding voting; Secret ballots;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

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