Is turning out to vote a public good contribution? Evidence from a new democracy

Why do people turn out to vote? By requiring coordination and by generating positive externalities on others while involving a private cost, turning out to vote resembles a public good contribution and is therefore subject to collective action problems. While this has been established theoretically, the empirical evidence is fraught with measurement and identification problems. We investigate whether the motivations for turning out to vote are similar to those for contributing to a public good by comparing voter turnout with contributions to a public good in a very simple, clearly defined laboratory experiment. We conduct our study in a new democracy, Albania. We investigate voter turnout in two different contexts: the elections of parent class representatives in primary schools, and the 2009 parliamentary elections. We combine survey and experimental data on 1800 randomly selected parents from 180 nationally representative primary schools, with data generated by the 2008 LSMS survey, and with official district-level records on voter turn-out in the 2009 elections. Our findings suggest that turning out to vote is indeed a public good contribution: individuals’ propensities to contribute to the public good in the experiment predict both their participation in the school-level elections of parent class representatives, and the district-level voter turnout in the national elections. JEL CODES: C93, D72, H4, O12