Cross-National Yardstick Comparisons: A Choice Experiment on a Forgotten Voter Heuristic

Abstract

Comparing performance between countries is both a theoretically and intuitively useful yardstick for voters. Cross-national comparisons provide voters with heuristics that are less cognitively demanding, less ambiguous, and less uncertain than solely national, absolute performance measurements. We test this proposition using a unique, choice experiment embedded in the 2011 Danish National Election Study. This design allows to contrast cross-national comparisons with more traditional national sociotropic and egotropic concerns. The findings suggest that voters are strongly influenced by cross-national performance comparisons-even when accounting for classic national sociotropic and egotropic items. Specifically, voters respond strongly to how the prospective wealth of Denmark evolves relative to the neighboring Sweden. Interestingly, voters are more negative in their response to cross-national losses compared to their positive response to cross-national gains-indicating a negativity bias in voters' preferences.

Compared to What? How Social and Historical Reference Points Affect Citizens’ Performance Evaluations

“…Early on, Simon and Ridley (1938: 467) reliance on social comparisons, public managers are incentivized to keep up with the performance that citizens observe in other organizations (Hansen et al 2014). The natural research question then becomes if managers aim to affect the reference point against which their own performance is compared against?…”

“…There can be business cycles and long-term trends which cannot be factored in when comparing the present situation with past times. Instead, citizens' are better off by applying neighboring jurisdictions or other similar social reference points as a means for comparison with current performance (Hansen et al 2014). …”

Citizen satisfaction under changing political leadership: The role of partisan motivated reasoning

“…For example, the negativity bias is one of the driving forces behind political principals' blame avoidance, because their failures will be more likely remembered and electorally punished than their success (Hood, ; Soroka, ; Weaver, ). The negativity bias is a well‐established mechanism in politics and public administration and can be observed in a wide range of areas, including evaluations of economic outcomes within or between countries (Hansen, Olsen, & Bech, ; Soroka, ), responses to service failure (Boyne et al, ; James & John, ; see also James & Jilke, ), as well as in the evaluation of public service performance information (James, ; James & Moseley, ; Olsen, ). The notion of the negativity bias is further reinforced when examining its implications for electoral outcomes.…”

Human Interest or Hard Numbers? Experiments on Citizens’ Selection, Exposure, and Recall of Performance Information

“…Key experimental findings show that performance data clearly affect citizens’ attitudes (Bækgaard ; James ). Moreover, citizens draw on reference points for comparisons (Charbonneau and Van Ryzin ; Hansen, Olsen, and Bech ; James and Moseley ; Olsen, forthcoming), and they engage in motivated reasoning and draw on implicit attitudes in their interpretations of performance data (Bækgaard and Serritzlew ; Marvel ). In addition, simple framing effects can alter the inferences that citizens draw from the data (James and Van Ryzin ; Olsen , ).…”