Property Tax Information and Support for School Bond Referenda: Experimental Evidence

Abstract

This article reports on an experiment testing whether additional information influences support for bond referenda. Respondents were randomly assigned to treatment conditions that varied the way the potential implications of property tax increases were presented to voters. The results show a persistent negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatments. Specifically, the results show that the probability of voting yes decreased by 6 to 9 percentage points, depending on the treatment. This result persists across multiple specifications and robustness tests. The effects are consistent across populations, with only those with high levels of education showing no statistically significant effect of the treatment on their support for school referenda. Evidence for Practice Some states require bond referenda to include statements that seek to make plain the connection between ballot passage and property taxes, while others do not. We find a persistent negative effect of property tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda of 6 to 9 percentage points, depending on the wording. This line of research has become increasingly important to public policy making given that about half the states, including the largest state, California, have some type of property tax wording requirements for referenda. We argue that providing wording connecting property taxes to bond referenda passage is consistent with transparency efforts governments have pursued for decades. However, such wording might not improve the accuracy of information for citizens since, ultimately, the ensuing property tax levy depends on myriad factors, only one of which is debt service on bonds.

Information use in public administration and policy decision‐making: A research synthesis

“…More precisely, the use of data in managing performance accounts for 28 percent of the total number of primary studies, equaling the use of data to design and implement public policies that also accounts for 28 percent of the sample. These topics are followed by investigations of the use of information for stakeholder governance (14 percent of the studies) (e.g., Funke et al, 2021; Jungblut & Jungblut, 2022; Meyfroodt & Desmidt, 2022; Solorio et al, 2023), budgeting and finance (11 percent) (e.g., Brunner et al, 2021; Lindermüller et al, 2022; van der Voet & Lems, 2022), and managing human resources (9 percent) (Hong & Kim, 2019; Petersen et al, 2019). The occurrence of each of the remainder of topics is less than 6 percent in the final sample.…”

“…Of the 142 studies that specify the country setting (Table 6), the majority have been conducted in Europe (42 percent) (among the most recent Linos et al, 2022;Phillips et al, 2023) or North America (40 percent) (among the most recent Brunner et al, 2021;Meier et al, 2022). These are followed by work conducted in Asia ( 8…”

Experimental evidence about property tax word aversion

“…In this case, however, one cannot tell how much of the reaction is from Minnesota simply using the words "property taxes" or the increased salience of letting people know their bill will go up by some unspecified amount. Similarly, Brunner et al (2020) conduct an experiment where they randomly assign respondents to treatment conditions that vary the way the potential implications of property tax increases are provided to voters on school bond referenda. They find a significant negative effect of tax information on the probability of support for school bond referenda across all treatment conditions.…”

The aftermath of ballot box success and failure: evidence from land preservation referendums

“…While a literature exists looking at the import of the wording of referendum titles and descriptions, and the length and ordering of questions on a ballot (e.g. Augenblick and Nicholson 2016;Brunner et al 2021;Matsusaka 2018), investigating the real-world consequences of failed referendums (Kogan et al 2017), as well as a large literature on ballot referendums writ large (Matsusaka 2008;Smith and Tolbert 2009;Dyck and Lascher 2019), no quantitative causal studies have investigated the actions of advocates and policy makers after a referendum failure or passage and the outcomes of these second attempts.…”