Framing effects in political decision making: evidence from a natural voting experiment

Arbeitspapier

This paper analyzes a recent ballot in which two virtually identical popular initiatives, both demanding a decrease in the legal age of retirement in Switzerland, led to differences in approval rates of nearly seven percentage points. Based on this unique natural experiment, the existence of emphasis framing effects is tested for and their determinants are identified outside of the controlled settings of laboratories. Nonetheless, the analyzed setting allows for considerably more control than usually available in the field: All party, government and interest group recommendations were symmetric for both initiatives, and the simultaneous vote rules out potential variation of individual preferences and compositional changes of the electorate over time. Using community and individual level data it is shown that the difference in approval rates is largely due to the different emphases in the initiatives' titles.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 1940

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Social Security and Public Pensions ; Retirement; Retirement Policies
• Subject: framing effect ; voting ; direct democracy ; pension reform ; bounded rationality ; natural experiment ; Abstimmung ; Rentenreform ; Framing ; Probit-Modell ; Schweiz

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Bütler, Monika ; Maréchal, Michel André
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2007

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/25985
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:41 AM CET