Framing Environmental Ballot, Propositions: The Influence of Simultaneous 'Pocketbook Measures' and Negative Framing
University of St. Gallen Working Paper No. 2001-05
45 Pages Posted: 20 Jul 2001
Date Written: April 2001
Abstract
According to the theory of "expressive voting", the individual gives more weight to her "warm-glow" preferences for a public good than to her instrumental interests when casting a vote rather than deciding in a market environment. Even so, these expressive preferences can be moderated since they are subject to (unintentional) framing. Such framing occurs if the policy measure bears a negative connotation with respect to the provision of the public good (negative frame) or if a monetary stimulus is caused by any other measure on the ballot (pocketbook-effect). In this paper, I estimate regressions for voting against the improvement of environmental policy in California based on highly aggregated data between 1970 and 1998. The results give cause for the supposition that a pocketbook effect is born by measures that increase prices and general taxes and attract high campaign spending. Furthermore, a negative frame is effective only if it is accompanied by one-sided negative spending.
Keywords: Voting Behavior, Warm-Glow Preferences, Decision Framing, Environmental Public Goods
JEL Classification: D72, H49
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
By Christopher K. Hsee, George Loewenstein, ...
-
Preference Reversals and the Measurement of Environmental Values
By Julie R. Irwin, Paul Slovic, ...
-
Music, Pandas, and Muggers: On the Affective Psychology of Value
-
Elastic Justification: How Tempting But Task-Irrelevant Factors Influence Decisions
-
Elastic Justification: How Unjustifiable Factors Influence Judgments
-
Lay Rationalism and Inconsistency between Predicted Experience and Decision
By Christopher K. Hsee, Frank Yu, ...
-
A Meta-Analysis of Hypothetical Bias in Stated Preference Valuation
By James J. Murphy, P. Geoffrey Allen, ...
-
Distinction Bias: Misprediction and Mischoice Due to Joint Evaluation
By Christopher K. Hsee and Jiao Zhang
-
Less is Better: When Low-Value Options are Valued More Highly than High-Value Options
