Voting decision‐making of low‐income consumers: Literature review and research agenda

Abstract

This review article examines why and how low‐income voters decide to vote for a political candidate. A total of 163 articles in the last 80 years (1944–2023) have been identified through a systematic literature review. Thereafter, the fragmented literature has been organized using a fusion of 3W1H and TCCM (Theory, context, characteristics, and method) frameworks to obtain a comprehensive overview of the low‐income voters' behaviour. Accordingly, the study has explained the voting contexts of poor consumers. Besides, the fundamental theories and methods employed in this research domain have been identified. This study revealed three characteristics of ‘voting choice’ of low‐income consumers (group identity, communication characteristics, and political environment characteristics) that have been further classified under several sub‐themes. This review article pioneers to provide an integrated and organized analysis of the literature on the voting behaviour of low‐income consumers, highlighting critical research gaps in theories, contexts, methods, and antecedents that future researchers can examine to extend the discourse in this realm.