Do you have a voting plan?: implementation intentions, voter turnout, and organic plan making

Area of Science:

• Psychological Science
• Political Science
• Behavioral Economics

Background:

• Phone calls are common campaign tools to encourage voting.
• Psychological insights can enhance the effectiveness of these calls.
• Existing methods lack significant impact on voter turnout.

Purpose of the Study:

• To test the effectiveness of implementation intentions (voting plans) in increasing voter turnout.
• To compare the impact of voting plans against standard encouragement calls and self-prediction.
• To explore factors influencing the effectiveness of voting plans in different household types.

Main Methods:

• A large-scale field experiment (N = 287,228) during the 2008 presidential election.
• Intervention involved facilitating the formation of a voting plan (implementation intentions).
• Comparison groups received standard encouragement calls or self-prediction prompts.

Main Results:

• Facilitating voting plans increased turnout by 4.1 percentage points among those contacted.
• Standard encouragement calls and self-prediction had no significant impact.
• Voting plans increased turnout by 9.1 percentage points in single-voter households but had no effect in multiple-voter households.

Conclusions:

• Implementation intentions are a potent tool for increasing voter turnout.
• The effectiveness of voting plans can be moderated by household structure and situational factors.
• Findings have implications for public interventions and psychological/political science theory.