Political mobilization in the laboratory: the role of norms and communication
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: Political mobilization in the laboratory: the role of norms and communication
zbMATH Open document ID: 1478.91051
author: Pedro Robalo
published in: Games
publication date: 2021-11-26T00:00:00Z
review text: Summary: Many field experiments have shown that political mobilization increases voter turnout, with personalized strategies considerably outperforming widely administered ones. Despite the abundant evidence, there is no systematic explanation of what drives citizens' response to mobilization. In this paper, I propose and experimentally test in the laboratory a theoretical framework that investigates the psychological mechanisms underlying mobilization in both partisan and non-partisan settings. I conjecture that material mobilization efforts should increase participation because of reciprocity concerns. The transmission of normative appeals through interpersonal communication should have a similar effect by making a group norm salient. The results from two experiments show that the combination of a mobilization effort with a normative appeal leads to a significant and substantial increase in participation in both settings. Using content analysis, I show that this interaction effect is due to the way normative appeals are perceived when the sender is in charge of mobilization.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 91A90
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 91F10
zbMATH DE Number: 7434023
zbMATH Keywords: mobilization
zbMATH Keywords: political participation
zbMATH Keywords: laboratory experiment
zbMATH Keywords: norms
zbMATH Keywords: communication
cites work: inteff
cites work: N‐person Prisoner's Dilemma†
cites work: Quantal response equilibria for normal form games
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describes a project that uses: inteff
describes a project that uses: Z-Tree
MaRDI profile type: Publication
full work available at URL: g12010024
OpenAlex ID: W3134374482
DOI: 10.3390/G12010024
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7434023