Does Dissonant Voting Affect Identity?: Experiments on Environmentalism in Canada

• In Event: Environmentalism and (Green) Party Politics in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Prior research suggests that elections can be a crucible for the formation of political beliefs. We first analyze data from a field experiment to develop a hypothesis regarding the effect of voting on identity, and then test this hypothesis with a survey experiment. First, in 2017 we partnered with a network of environmental groups in British Columbia, Canada to randomly assign two types of get-out-the-vote (GOTV) conversations to the groups’ supporters ahead of the provincial elections. Supporters were assigned to a control group, a standard GOTV phone call involving plan-making, and an issue-based GOTV call involving a conversation about environmental issues before the blandishment to vote.

Although the two treatments raised voter turnout to a similar extent, their effects on supporters’ environmentalist identities differed. The standard GOTV call weakened supporters’ identities as environmentalists, while the issue-based GOTV call inoculated supporters somewhat from this negative effect. We posit that the negative effect of GOTV on environmentalist identity results from an increase in dissonant voting. Ahead of the election, the less environmental New Democratic Party (NDP) encouraged Green Party supporters to vote strategically to oust the incumbent center-right Liberal Party government. When Greens voted for the NDP, they may have reevaluated the degree to which they prioritized environmental issues at the ballot box.

To test our dissonant voting hypothesis, we plan to conduct a survey experiment involving Canadian Green Party supporters. Respondents will read a fictional news article about an election in their riding and indicate the candidate they would vote for. Respondents in the treatment condition will receive an article describing a close race between two major parties with the Greens lagging far behind, while the placebo article will say that the Greens were unable to field a candidate. We hypothesize that casting a vote against the Green Party will reduce respondents’ identification as environmentalists.

Authors

• Geoffrey Lancaster Henderson, University of California, Santa Barbara

• Matto Mildenberger, University of California Santa Barbara

• Leah Stokes, UCSB