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Voting to Tell Others

Last registered on December 14, 2016
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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Voting "Because Others Will Ask" in the United States
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001842
Initial registration date
December 14, 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
December 14, 2016, 11:32 AM 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
Stefano DellaVigna
Affiliation
UC Berkeley
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Gautam Rao
PI Affiliation
Harvard University
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PI Name
Ulrike Malmendier
PI Affiliation
University of California, Berkeley
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PI Name
John A. List
PI Affiliation
University of Chicago
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Additional Trial Information

Status
Completed
Start date
2011-01-01
End date
2012-11-30
Keywords
Governance
Additional Keywords
vote, social motivation, elections, social image, incentives
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
Why do people vote? We design a field experiment to estimate a model of voting 'because others will ask'. The expectation of being asked motivates turnout if individuals derive pride from telling others that they voted, or feel shame from admitting that they did not vote, provided that lying is costly. In a door-to-door survey about election turnout, we experimentally vary (i) the informational content and use of a flyer pre-announcing the survey, (ii) the duration and payment for the survey, and (iii) the incentives to lie about past voting. The experimental results indicate significant social image concerns. For the 2010 Congressional election, we estimate a value of voting 'to tell others' of about $15, contributing 2 percentage points to turnout. Lastly, we evaluate a get-out-the-vote intervention in which we tell potential voters that we will ask if they voted.
External Link(s)
J-PAL Evaluation Summary

Registration Citation

Citation
DellaVigna, Stefano et al. 2016. "Voting "Because Others Will Ask" in the United States." AEA RCT Registry. December 14. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1842-1.0
Former Citation
DellaVigna, Stefano et al. 2016. "Voting "Because Others Will Ask" in the United States." AEA RCT Registry. December 14. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1842/history/12414
Sponsors & Partners
Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The experiment is a combination of four crossed interventions: (i) flyer treatments, (ii) payment and duration of the survey, (iii) survey content announcement at the door, and (iv) incentives to claim non-voter status. One of five different flyers were left at each house, informing the household about the next day's survey: No Flyer, Survey Flyer, Election Flyer, Opt-Out Flyer, and Election Opt-Out Flyer. Survey flyers simply stated the household would be asked to complete a survey. Election flyers specified that the survey would be about 'your voter participation in the 2010 congressional election." Households in the Opt-Out Flyer treatment receive a flyer as in the Survey Flyer treatment, except for an added check-box which the household can mark if it does not wish to be disturbed. Similarly, the flyer in the Election Opt-Out Flyer treatment has an added opt-out check box.

Second, payment ($5 or $10) and the time necessary (5 or 10 minutes) for the survey were randomly varied and pre-announced on flyers. Lastly, half the respondents of the ten-minute survey were informed that the survey would be eight minutes shorter if they stated that they did not vote in the 2010 congressional election. For voters, this treatment amounts to an incentive to lie and permits us to quantify the disutility of voters were they to say (untruthfully) that they did not vote. For the 50 percent of non-voters who lie without such incentives, this treatment provides an incentive to tell the truth.

In a secondary experiment, in the five days before the election date, researchers posted a flyer on the doorknob of households informing them that 'researchers will contact you within three weeks of the election [...] to conduct a survey on your voter participation.'
Intervention Start Date
2011-07-01
Intervention End Date
2012-11-06

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
opening the door, survey completion, lying about voting, voter behavior
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
In this paper, researchers estimate a model of voting 'to tell others' by using an experiment which randomized flyers and surveys about voting behaviors. The field experiment had three main sets of treatments: 1) randomization of information on the flyer, 2) randomized and pre-announced payment for and length of the survey, and 3) randomized incentives meant to evoke different responses to a question about voter turnout.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Every half-hour, the surveyor moves to a different street in the neighborhood and begins a new route of 13 homes, typically entering a different treatment in the next route.
Randomization Unit
Route (group of 13 houses)
Was the treatment clustered?
Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
On a single work day, each surveyor was assigned 8 routes. Work days were Saturdays and Sundays from July - November 2011.
Sample size: planned number of observations
Flyer and survey experiment: 14,475 households Get out the vote experiment: 125,111 individuals
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Please refer to Figure 3 of DellaVigna, List, & Malmendier (2016) for a breakdown of sample sizes by treatment arm.
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Social & Behavioral Sciences Institutional Review Board, University of Chicago
IRB Approval Date
Details not available
IRB Approval Number
Details not available
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
Yes
Intervention Completion Date
November 06, 2012, 12:00 +00:00
Data Collection Complete
Yes
Data Collection Completion Date
November 06, 2012, 12:00 +00:00
Final Sample Size: Number of Clusters (Unit of Randomization)
Was attrition correlated with treatment status?
Final Sample Size: Total Number of Observations
13,197 houesholds
Final Sample Size (or Number of Clusters) by Treatment Arms
Please refer to Figure 3 of DellaVigna, List, & Malmendier (2016) for a breakdown of sample sizes by treatment arm.
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
Yes
Public Data URL
http://eml.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/index.html

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Abstract
Voting to Tell Others - Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming.
Citation
Della Vigna, Stefano, John List, Ulrike Malmendier, and Gautam Rao. "Voting to Tell Others." Review of Economic Studies. Forthcoming.
URL
https://www.povertyactionlab.org/sites/default/files/publications/4088_Voting%20to%20tell%20Other_May%202016.pdf

Reports & Other Materials