Impact of information acquisition costs on voting choices : an experimental study on information acquisition and ideological distances

Individual decision-making and its applications have been of scientific interest for a long time. Decision-making is central to behaviour and can have multiple stages and contexts. This thesis looks at voting behaviour with a focus on the very initial stages of choice-making. The aim is to investigate how influential information acquisition and the related costs are to a personally rational decision – one in which the individual chooses a representative for themselves that best complements their ideological views. This thesis takes the unique viewpoint of a multiparty setting and adapts mathematical models to quantify the different variables associated with voting choices. To build a fuller representation of how these information acquisition costs influence choices, a pilot laboratory experiment is conducted. The results obtained suggest that information acquisition is highly influential to the outcomes of voting and needs to be well balanced, as information enhances the gains from voting, but the costs from acquiring information can have a negative impact on the outcome. Additionally, it is found that the initial information an individual possesses guides their further desire to look for information. This study concludes that there seems to be a need to study the issue further to better understand how decisions are made in a multiparty system and how information affects these decisions

Ehdokkaiden arvomaailmat

Non peer reviewe

How voters choose one out of many : A conjoint analysis of the effects of endorsements on candidate choice

Candidate endorsements affect the likelihood that people vote for a candidate since they reduce the efforts devoted to vote choices. However, the effects of endorsements from different sources remain under-explored. Furthermore, the effects of endorsements are believed to vary with the level of political sophistication, as voters with low sophistication are more reliant on such shortcuts, but it is unclear whether these differences are similar for different sources. We study the effects of endorsements from three different sources – family and close friends, networks on social media and Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) – on candidate favorability. We do so with a choice-based conjoint experiment embedded in a survey from Finland (n = 1021), where we also examine differences in effects across political sophistication (political interest, frequency of political discussions, internal political efficacy, party identification, and voting in the last parliamentary election). The results show that endorsements from VAAs and family and friends have positive effects while social media networks do not. We do not find systematic differences in effects across levels of political sophistication no matter how we operationalize it. This shows that it is important to consider the source of an endorsement to appreciate the effect, no matter who is the recipient.Peer reviewe

Edustuksellisuuden henkilökohtainen ulottuvuus – puoluejohtajat ja ehdokkaat

Non peer reviewe

Kampanjointi

Non peer reviewe

Finding the One : Ease of Candidate Choices in High Information Open-List PR Systems

Vote choice in an open-list proportional representation (OLPR) electoral system can be considered a complex process. In systems where votes are cast for individual candidates the choice is complicated by the large number of candidates, the two layers of competition involving both individual candidates and parties, and the amount of information required to make an informed choice. Hence, voters are expected to apply strategies to narrow down the pool of candidates from which the actual choice is made, that is, to create a delimited consideration set using cognitive heuristics. The types of strategies that facilitate voters' candidate choice are studied. More specifically, the voters' perceptions of the ease with which they choose their candidate and how this is related to three decision-making patterns are studied: the party-centric, in which the voter looks for party-related and ideological cues; the socio-normative, in which the voter considers their social in-group; and the candidate-related, in which the voter puts emphasis on specific features of the candidates, such as political experience, age and gender. Our study is situated in the Finnish OLPR system, characterized by many candidates, intense intra-party competition and mandatory preferential voting. Using data from the 2019 Finnish National Election Study and ordinal probit selection models, the mechanisms that facilitate the ease of candidate choice are outlined. Our findings suggest that voters feeling close to a political party and knowing the candidate personally or through friends or family perceive their candidate choice as easier.Peer reviewe

Conjoint candidate choice

Conjoint analysis of how endorsements and likelihood of election affect candidate evaluation