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Is civic duty the solution to the paradox of voting?

  • Abel FrançoisEmail author
  • Olivier Gergaud
Article
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Abstract

Although sense of civic duty is seen by many scholars as the most obvious solution to the paradox of voting, very few empirical studies provide clear evidence on that motive. We use blood donation to build proxies, focusing only on intrinsic motivations, and then introduce such measures into electoral turnout regressions. Our results show that civic duty has a strong influence on voter turnout rates, confirming that the satisfaction voters receive from voting matters regardless of election outcomes. The results are even stronger when we incorporate the number of plasma and platelet donations, which take more time and require stronger commitments from donors.

Keywords

Electoral turnout Paradox of voting Civic duty Blood donations Calculus of voting 
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Notes

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© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.LEM (UMR 9221)University of LilleVilleneuve d′AscqFrance
  2. 2.KEDGE Business SchoolTalenceFrance
  3. 3.LIEPP, Sciences PoParisFrance

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