Article Summary
Introduction
Political participation does not happen in isolation; rather, it is often observed by peers. Being aware that peers could learn about an individual’s political participation can have effects on their participation behavior. This is because an individual may feel pressured to comply with their peers’ expectations and, thereby, adjust their behavior. Focusing on donation behavior, the authors address the following questions: Does being aware that an individual’s donation participation will be visible to neighbors affect their donation behavior? And does learning about higher donation levels among neighbors increase an individual’s donation contributions? These questions are relevant to explaining political participation because campaign contributions are made public by the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC). Hence, besides exploring the effects of social pressure on political participation, the authors also seek to assess the consequences of publicly available donation records on donation behavior.
Analytical Approach
The authors conducted a large-scale field experiment to examine the social effects on donation behavior. Specifically, they relied on records provided by the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) listing all individuals who made a campaign contribution over $200 between April 2011 and April 2012. After cleaning the data (e.g., removing individuals with unclear addresses), the authors arrived at a subject pool of 191,832 individuals. Out of these, they randomized a subset of individuals who were sent a letter with different treatment conditions. The treatment conditions are listed in the table below. 36,773 respondents received a Website letter (Website-Self and Website-Neighbor), 36,795 received a List letter, and 18,430 received a Placebo letter.
| Treatment arm | Treatment condition | Letter wording |
|---|---|---|
| Conformity channel | Website-Self | A letter providing information on how to use the Federal Election Commission (FEC) website and how to search for individual contributors. The letter also contained a list with the letter recipient's name, address, amount given, and party affiliation, along with the same information for the nearest five neighbors who contributed to a campaign. Recipients were also informed that they were the only household that was randomly selected in the neighborhood. |
| Website-Neighbors | A letter providing information on how to use the Federal Election Commission (FEC) website and how to search for individual contributors. The letter also contained a list with the letter recipient’s name, address, amount given, and party affiliation, along with the same information for the nearest five neighbors who contributed to the campaign. Recipients were also informed that their and other households in the neighborhood were randomly selected to receive a letter. | |
| Placebo | A letter that informed recipients about contribution limits as stipulated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC). | |
| Comparison channel | List letter with randomized neighbor campaign contributions | Letter that provided recipients with a list of their own campaign contributions along with the campaign contributions of nine other individuals from the recipients’ area of residence. The nine other contributors were selected with an algorithm to induce variation in the average donation level of the other residents. The list of donors also included information about the address and the recipient of the donation (Democrat or Republican candidate). |
The outcome variable for all treatment conditions is the recipients’ donation contributions to one of the two presidential campaign committees (Obama and Romney) after receiving the letter. For the conformity channel, the authors compute the share of donors in a recipient’s neighborhood that gave to the in-party candidate. Using this share, the authors then examine whether a higher share of co-partisan donors in the neighborhood increases donations for the co-partisan candidate when recipients are informed about the publicly available FEC data. Conversely, the authors test whether a lower share of co-partisan donors is associated with reduced campaign contributions when recipients are informed about the publicly available FEC data. For the comparison channel, the authors test whether a higher average donation level among neighbors listed on the treatment letter results in higher post-treatment campaign contributions.
Main Findings
The authors report that being informed about the transparency of individual donations (conformity channel) increases if a majority in the neighborhood supports the individual’s preferred party. Conversely, if only a minority in the neighborhood supported the individual’s preferred party, their campaign contribution was smaller. In substantive terms, in neighborhoods where 75 percent support one party, the conformity treatment increased campaign contributions of minority supporters by 15 percent and decreased contributions among minority supporters by 41 percent. Moreover, the higher the neighbors’ average contributions listed on the letter (comparison channel), the more individuals gave to a campaign post-treatment. In substantive terms, each $100 in the average amount contributed by own-party neighbors resulted in an increase of the recipient’s own contribution by $13.60. Lastly, the authors find that a higher share of in-party relative to out-party donors decreases an individual’s campaign contribution, which suggests that recipients tend to free-ride when they see that more in-party than out-party neighbors already contribute to campaigns.
Implications
The study provides strong evidence that being aware that political participation is visible to others affects individuals’ participation behavior. A key implication of this finding is that publicly available donation records provided by the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC) may have unintended negative consequences. While public records are intended to improve transparency on politicians’ donation sources, they also reveal individuals’ participation behavior and may thereby interfere with their participation choices. The authors thus propose to remove some information from the FEC database, such as individuals’ addresses, or to charge a small fee for accessing the database, so that individuals cannot easily access their neighbors’ donation records.
Questions left unanswered
While the study provides compelling evidence that the visibility of individuals’ political participation affects donation behavior, the question remains whether social pressure also applies to other forms of political participation. While choices in elections are secret, participating in political debates, sharing content on social media, and potentially registering with a party to vote are all public, and future research may investigate whether these other forms of participation are also influenced by the composition of the social environment.
Methods and Analysis
Was the study and its analyses pre-registered?: No
Did the study rely on proxy variables to measure polarization?: Yes
The authors use the share of in-party relative to out-party donors in a neighborhood as an indicator of polarization.
Were standard p-value thresholds used (p<.05 or 95% Confidence Intervals that don’t overlap zero)?: Yes
- Largest p-value presented as significant: 0.05
Were correlational results interpreted with causal language?: No
Limitations / Weaknesses
While the authors are transparent that many recipients may not have read the letter, the sample that engaged with the letter is likely different from the overall donor population. Therefore, the question remains as to what extent the results identified in the analysis are representative of all campaign donors as a whole.
Moreover, while the treatment assignment is random, the partisan composition in a recipient’s neighborhood is not. The authors have conducted a series of robustness tests, including additional covariates, to address concerns over omitted variable bias. However, it’s possible that party strongholds differ systematically in their sociodemographic characteristics from more politically balanced neighborhoods. Hence, the key claim of the article, that the partisan composition of a donor’s neighborhood affects recipients’ response to higher participation visibility, remains correlational.
Open Data & Analyses
Does the article make the replication data publicly available?: No
Does the article make the replication analysis scripts publicly available?: No
Article Citation
Perez-Truglia, R., & Cruces, G. (2017). Partisan Interactions: Evidence from a Field Experiment in the United States. Journal of Political Economy, 125(4), 1208–1243.
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@article{PerezTruglia.2017,
author = {Perez-Truglia, Ricardo and Cruces, Guillermo},
year = {2017},
title = {Partisan Interactions: Evidence from a Field Experiment in the United States},
pages = {1208--1243},
volume = {125},
number = {4},
journal = {Journal of Political Economy}
}