The Impact of Voting Advice Applications: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment
(2022) Summer Conference of the Japanese Society of Quantitative Political Science (JSQPS) — Location: Tokyo (8.July.2022)
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- Abstract
- Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are civic information tools that have been used increasingly by voters in recent elections to determine, based on their answers to policy questions, which candidates and political parties are closest to their preferences. Despite the growing popularity of VAAs in today’s elections, little is known about the impact they have on voters' choices and their understanding of politics. Existing studies, mostly based on observational research with a few exceptions, have so far yielded inconclusive and mixed results. To overcome the endogeneity problem and more rigorously examine their causal effects, we conducted a randomized field experiment around the general election held in Japan in October 2021, involving over 4,300 participants. In the paper, we examine the effect of using VAAs on vote choice through a battery of probability to vote (PTV) questions to see to what extent voters’ decisions are reinforced or altered, and particularly if voters’ preferences more or less polarized after treatment, i.e., whether the distance from the most preferred party and all other parties increases or decreases. In addition, we also test VAAs’ effects on political interest and political satisfaction, and how the use of VAAs can improve voters’ political knowledge, including understanding of party positions.
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Camatarri, S., Gallina, M., Hino, A., Fahey, R. A., & Serdult, U. (2022). The Impact of Voting Advice Applications: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment. Summer Conference of the Japanese Society of Quantitative Political Science (JSQPS), Tokyo. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/237187