Voting and Habit Formation in the United States

Last registered on November 25, 2016
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Voting and Habit Formation in the United States
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001666
Initial registration date
November 25, 2016

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
November 25, 2016, 9:09 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
United States of America
Region
North America

Primary Investigator

Name
Donald Green
Affiliation
Columbia University
Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Ron Shachar
PI Affiliation
Tel Aviv University
Contact Investigator
PI Name
Alan Gerber
PI Affiliation
Yale University
Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
1998-09-01
End date
1999-11-03
Keywords
Governance
Additional Keywords
Habit formation, Voting behavior
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Habit is a frequently mentioned but understudied cause of political action. This article provides the first direct test of the hypothesis that casting a ballot in one election increases one's propensity to go to the polls in the future. A field experiment involving tens of thousands of registered voters was conducted prior to the November general election of 1998. Subjects were randomly assigned to treatment conditions in which they were urged to vote through direct mail or face-to-face canvassing. Compared to a control group that received no contact, the treatment groups were significantly more likely to vote in 1998. The treatment groups were also significantly more likely to vote in local elections held in November of 1999. After deriving a statistical estimator to isolate the effect of habit, we find that, ceteris paribus, voting in one election substantially increases the likelihood of voting in the future. Indeed, the influence of past voting exceeds the effects of age and education reported in previous studies.
External Link(s)
J-PAL Evaluation Summary

Registration Citation

Citation
Gerber, Alan, Donald Green and Ron Shachar. 2016. "Voting and Habit Formation in the United States." AEA RCT Registry. November 25. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1666-1.0
Former Citation
Gerber, Alan, Donald Green and Ron Shachar. 2016. "Voting and Habit Formation in the United States." AEA RCT Registry. November 25. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1666/history/12019
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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Personal Canvassing - During each Saturday and Sunday for four weeks prior to the 1998 election, canvassers were sent to contact randomly selected registered voters. Canvassers appealed either to the citizen's sense of civic duty, neighborhood solidarity, or desire to cast a pivotal vote. Additionally, ordinarily canvassers close their appeal by saying, "We hope you'll come out and vote." For a random subset of the treatment group, the closing statement was augmented with the question, "Can I count on you to vote on November 3rd?"

Direct Mailings - The direct mail treatment group was separated into three subgroups and sent 1, 2, or 3 mailings, respectively. The mailings were sent out at three points in time: 15 days before the election, 13 days before the election, and 8 days before the election. The subgroup that was sent three pieces of mail was included on all three mailing dates; the subgroup receiving two mailings was sent mail on the two mailing dates closest to the election, and the remaining subgroup was sent mail eight days before election day.

Please refer to Gerber & Green (2000) for more details about the mail and canvassing interventions.
Intervention Start Date
1998-10-06
Intervention End Date
1998-10-26

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Voter turnout in 1998 and 1999
Primary Outcomes (explanation)
Voter turnout was measured using public records for both the 1998 and 1999 elections.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experiment was designed to measure the effect of personal canvassing and direct mail appeals on voter turnout. The experiment was a 2 x 4 design whereby individuals were assigned to receive canvassing (or not), and between 0-3 separate mailings.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
The sample was divided by a series of independent random assignments. Random assignment was conducted via computer software (SPSS).
Randomization Unit
Household
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
25,200 individuals were analyzed -- in the published study, no correction was made, unfortunately, for the fact that some voters lived in two-person households.

See Gerber and Green (APSR 2005) for a comparison of corrected and uncorrected standard errors for the original 1998 turnout analysis.
Sample size: planned number of observations
25,200 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
No canvassing + no mail: 10,073 individuals
No canvassing + 1 mail: 3,309 individuals
No canvassing + 2 mails: 3,515 individuals
No canvassing + 3 mails: 3,353 individuals
Canvassing + no mail: 2,492 individuals
Canvassing + 1 mail: 778 individuals
Canvassing + 2 mails: 826 individuals
Canvassing + 3 mails: 854 individuals
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
IRB Approval Date
IRB Approval Number
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
October 26, 1998, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
November 03, 1999, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
25,200 individuals
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
No
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
25,200 individuals
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Final sample size differed from planned sample size for the canvassing treatment. 4,950 individuals were assigned the canvassing treatment, but canvassers were only able to contact 1,462 of the 4,950 (29.5%) individuals.
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
A field experiment assessed the effects of a nonpartisan voter mobilization drive. On the weekend before the 1998 general election, voters in the treatment group received an 8" x 11" card on which was printed a nonpartisan encouragement to vote. This treatment had no effect on the turnout rates of registered Republicans and Democrats, but it increased the turnout of those voters unaffiliated with a major party by approximately 7%. We find that the treatment was particularly effective at increasing voting among those unaffiliated voters who voted in 1996.
Citation
Gerber, Alan S., and Donald P. Green. 2000. "The Effect of a Nonpartisan Get-Out-the-Vote Drive: An Experimental Study of Leafletting." The Journal of Politics 62 (3): 846-857.
URL
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1111/0022-3816.00035
Abstract
Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment
Citation
Gerber, Alan S., Donald P. Green, and Ron Shachar. 2003. "Voting May Be Habit-Forming: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment." American Journal of Political Science 47(3): 540-550.
URL
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-5907.00038/full

Reports & Other Materials