Can Civil Society Organizations Sway Elections? – Online Survey Experiment

Last registered on July 19, 2021

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Can Civil Society Organizations Sway Elections? – Online Survey Experiment

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0004623

Initial registration date

August 24, 2019

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

August 29, 2019, 8:46 AM EDT

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

Last updated

July 19, 2021, 3:09 AM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Country

Germany

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Johannes Wimmer

Affiliation

LMU Munich

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Leonhard Vollmer

PI Affiliation

LMU Munich

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

On going

Start date

2019-08-23

End date

2022-03-31

Keywords

Governance

Additional Keywords

Civil Society Organizations, Populism, Online Survey Experiment

JEL code(s)

Secondary IDs

Abstract

W conduct an online survey experiment evaluating the effectiveness of civil society campaigns in shaping the attitudes and behavior of voters in the context of right-wing populism. This online experiment complements a field experiment conducted in the context of three state elections in Germany in the autumn of 2019. This online experiment has the following main goals: first, we aim to replicate our field experiment’s investigation of whether civil society campaigns against right-wing populism can influence attitudes and (vot- ing) behavior at the individual level. Second, we wish to utilize the individual-level data to study potential mechanisms and heterogeneities of how civil society campaigns might influence (voting) behavior. Third, we attempt to measure a ‘first stage’ of our field experiment: are survey respondents from the treated regions of our field experiment more aware of the civil society campaigns that we study in the field experiment? Finally, the main goal of this online experiment is to shed light on the role of a perceived alignment of identity traits between senders and receivers of political communication for the effectiveness of the communication. We do so by varying information about the (regional) identity of the campaign sender (the civil society organization).

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Vollmer, Leonhard and Johannes Wimmer. 2021. "Can Civil Society Organizations Sway Elections? – Online Survey Experiment." AEA RCT Registry. July 19. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.4623-2.4000000000000004

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention Start Date

2019-08-24

Intervention End Date

2019-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

Our primary outcomes: Electoral support for "Alternative für Deutschland"

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

We construct our primary outcome based on the following survey question: "How likely is it that you ever vote for Alternative für Deutschland?"

For more details, please refer to our pre-analysis plan.

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary outcome: turnout

Our secondary outcomes (not related to elections)
1. attitudes towards and beliefs about immigration
2. attitudes towards and beliefs about climate change
3. identity concerns
4. economic competition concerns

For more details, please refer to our pre-analysis plan.

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

As with our primary outcome, we construct these measures from participants' responses in our survey. For more details, please refer to our pre-analysis plan.

Experimental Design

We conduct an online survey experiment with 3,000 participants from Brandenburg, Sachsen, and Thüringen. The sample is representative in terms of age, gender, and income. As part of the survey we elicit a wide range of attitudes, beliefs, concerns, as well as revealed preferences measures form participants.

We expose two thirds of participants with the same campaign materials as in our companion field experiment (Please see the pre-analysis plan of the field experiment which also registered at the AEA RCT Registry for more details on the campaign). We refer to this as the campaign treatment. The remaining third of participants is assigned to the control group.

In addition, we experimentally vary true information about the regional identity of our project partner (and its members) among individuals in the campaign treatment group. We refer to this treatment as identity treatment. To be precise, we provide half of participants in the campaign treatment group with the information that our project partner has many members from her state of residence. The other half receives the information that our project partner is a Berlin-based organization.

For more details on the experimental design please see our pre-analysis plan.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

randomization done in office by a computer

Randomization Unit

individual

Was the treatment clustered?

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

3000

Sample size: planned number of observations

3000

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

Control: 1000
Local Treatment Group: 1000
Berlin Treatment Group: 1000

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

For our main outcomes we are able to detect the following effect sizes: 1. Campaign treatment: 10.8 percent of a standard deviation 2. Identity treatment: 12.5 percent of a standard deviation

Supporting Documents and Materials

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