"Don't You Plan on Voting?" The Motives and Effects of Peer Pressure in Voter Mobilization
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6447010 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Woo Jin Kim (0000-0002-6787-3522, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 231-268 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Quarterly Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1554-0626 • E-ISSN: 1554-0634 |
| Publisher | Now Publishers (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1561/100.00024022 |
| PMID | 40809991 |
| OpenAlex | W4409437368 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 34 |
This paper studies the motives behind socially pressuring others in the context of voter mobilization. In this online experiment, college students choose whether to send an email that pressures their campus peers to register to vote for the 2020 U.S. Elections. The senders have a negative average willingness-to-pay (WTP) to send the email, meaning they would rather pay than pressure their peers. The experiment reveals two counteracting motives at play. On the positive side, senders believe that pressuring their peers will persuade them to register. On the negative side, they believe that their peers will dislike being pressured, which outweighs the positive motives. However, under anonymous messaging, they become much less sensitive to whether the recipient dislikes being pressured, and their average WTP turns positive. This pattern of behavior reflects voters who are motivated by the prospect of mobilizing their peers, but are restrained by self-interested concerns from social costs or retaliation
Economics · Geography · Mobilization · Peer pressure · Plan (archaeology · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Voting · Voting behavior · Law · Psychology · Public Administration · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments
Testing for Altruism and Social Pressure in Charitable Giving
Voting to Tell Others
Social Incentives and Voter Turnout
A New Scale for Measuring Adults' Prosocialness
Peers at Work
Third-party punishment and social norms
A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization
Social Pressure on Social Media
A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains
Peer Pressure and Partnerships
Social Capital and Community Governance
The Traditional Socially Responsible Personality
The Cost of Convenience
The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political Arena
An Experimental Test for “Backlash” Against Social Pressure Techniques Used to Mobilize Voters
Field Experiments and the Study of Voter Turnout
Rational Choice Theory and the Paradox of Not Voting
Covenants with and without a Sword
Social Pressure and Voter Turnout
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |