Billboards and Turnout: A Randomized Field Experiment

Scholars argue that mass media appeals and other examples of communications that provide "noticeable reminders" to vote should elevate voter turnout (Dale and Strauss 2009 ), but a wide range of field experimental studies show that messages delivered via untargeted and impersonal means (su...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of political marketing Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 391 - 404
Main Authors Panagopoulos, Costas, Ha, Shang E.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Binghamton Routledge 02.10.2015
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Advertisements
Advertising
Billboards
campaigns
Election results
field experiment
GOTV
Intellectuals
Local elections
Mass media
Mobilization
Outdoor advertising
Political advertising
Political campaigns
Political participation
Reminders
Reproducibility
Voter behavior
Voter turnout
Voting
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Summary:Scholars argue that mass media appeals and other examples of communications that provide "noticeable reminders" to vote should elevate voter turnout (Dale and Strauss 2009 ), but a wide range of field experimental studies show that messages delivered via untargeted and impersonal means (such as mass media) are ineffective (Green and Gerber 2008 ). We test these competing hypotheses in a randomized, mass media field experiment using billboard advertisements to mobilize participation in local elections taking place in November 2007. Despite that outdoor advertising is commonly used in political campaigns to widely reach citizens, no study of which we are aware has experimentally tested the causal effects of billboard advertising on voter turnout. Our findings suggest that billboards are ineffective in generating higher levels of voter turnout. We discuss these results in comparison with other mass media advertisements and other get-out-the-vote methods. Experimental replication and extension is necessary to probe further the impact of outdoor advertising on voting behavior.
ISSN:1537-7857
1537-7865
DOI:10.1080/15377857.2015.1086141