Partisan Consumerism: Experimental Tests of Consumer Reactions to Corporate Political Activity

Abstract

To what extent do consumers' preferences change when they learn about firms' partisan allegiances? We address this question by conducting a series of experiments in which Democrats and Republicans were presented with factual information about corporate political donations. Outcomes were measured through expressed shopping intentions as well as a revealed consumer preference. Respondents became significantly more (less) likely to patronize chains that support (oppose) their party. The effects are found for both convenience samples and representative national samples and when information is conveyed in the context of a survey or unobtrusively via direct mail. Effects are especially large among those with strong partisan attachments. We conclude by arguing that the potential for partisan consumerism has risen with the advent of social media but may be undermined by a campaign finance system that increasingly allows for undisclosed corporate donations.

How Internal Constraints Shape Interest Group Activities: Evidence from Access-Seeking PACs

“…One possibility is that, even though independent expenditures are not funded by voluntary donations from affiliated individuals, any political spending on elections that goes against the partisan or ideological preferences of organizational members—such as board members, managers, shareholders, and employees—could provoke intense backlash within corporations and other access-seeking interest groups (Bonica 2016a). In particular, interest groups that wish to take advantage of independent expenditures may have to pay a significant economic cost as a result of such internal backlash (Min and You 2015; Panagopoulos et al 2016; McConnell et al 2018). Hence, internal constraints due to the partisan or ideological preferences of individual stakeholders may help to explain why the amount of corporate independent expenditures has been much more modest than many predicted in the aftermath of Citizens United .…”

“…Unlike PAC contributions to candidates and parties, which publicly insert interest groups into electoral battles, contributions to political intermediaries are much less transparent (Grumbach and Pierson 2017). Obscurity is valuable not so much for evading public scrutiny: companies that are not vulnerable to consumer boycotts behave similarly as those that are vulnerable (Bonica 2016a); and consumers are ignorant of basic facts about the PAC contribution records of even household brands (Panagopoulos et al 2016). Rather, internal backlash is a much more salient concern for corporations and other access-seeking PACs, as my survey shows that donors are well informed about their PACs’ activities.…”

“…In particular, research on business power in politics could benefit from understanding “business” not as a monolith, but as individual organizations whose political activities are shaped at least partly by the autonomous individuals within (Dahl 1959; Cyert and March 1963; Hart 2004). In addition to examining the partisan or ideological preferences of members of interest groups, future research may benefit from exploring how other internal factors—for example, internal economic backlash from interest group activities (Min and You 2015; Panagopoulos et al 2016; McConnell et al 2018), political learning curves of managers and other group entrepreneurs (Hart 2001; Drutman 2015), and principal-agent problems within organizations (Aggarwal, Meschke, and Wang 2012; Coates 2012; Werner and Coleman 2015)—could shape if not constrain interest group strategy and power.…”

“…Moreover, my finding contrasts with existing research on other corporate stakeholders such as consumers. For example, when presented with multiple-choice questions on basic facts about PAC contributions made by household brands, consumers’ answers were no better than random chance (Panagopoulos et al 2016). In contrast, among the 413 respondents from the Compustat sampling frame, a majority of their guesses on the percentage of their PAC’s contributions to Republican candidates were within 14.1 percentage points of the actual values, about only two thirds of a standard deviation of within-PAC changes in the percentage of PAC contributions to Republican recipients in actual campaign finance data (19.7 percentage points).…”

Screw Those Guys: Polarization, Empathy, and Attitudes About Out‐Partisans

“…Affective polarization can distort the labor market, both in hiring (Gift & Gift, 2015) and in employee behavior (McConnell, Margalit, Malhotra, & Levendusky, 2018). Partisans even appear to be willing to make decisions that are surprisingly harmful to their own good if it taps into their basic partisan identities (Iyengar & Krupenkin, 2018), such as turning down monetary rewards from companies that support PACS of the opposing party (Panagopoulos et al, 2016). If partisans are likely to exhibit behavior that hurts themselves to spite the other party, it is plausible that they will also be likely to shift their views of policies some based on who it helps and hurts.…”