The limits of behavioral nudges to increase youth turnout: Experimental evidence from two French elections

Rustam Romaniuc (1) , Andrea Guido (2) , Pierre Baudry (3) , Cécile Bazart (4) , Loïc Berger (5, 6, 7, 2) , Noémi Berlin (8) , Aurélie Bonein (9) , Imen Bouhlel (10, 11) , Kene Boun My (12) , Michela Chessa (11) , Paolo Crosetto (13) , Etienne Dagorn (14) , Quentin David (15) , Etienne Farvaque (15) , Agnès Festré (11) , Abel François (2) , Lisette Ibanez (4) , Herrade Igers- Heim (12) , Nicolas Jacquemet (16, 17) , Isabelle Lebon (9) , Mathieu Lefebvre (12) , Olivier l'Haridon (9) , Danlin Li , Youenn Loheac (9, 18) , Stéphane Luchini (19) , Laurent Muller (13) , Matthieu Pourieux (9) , Sébastien Roussel (20) , Petros Sekeris (21) , Maïté Stephan (22) , Eli Spiegelman (23) , Angela Sutan (24) , Uyanga Turmunkh (5) , Laurence Vardaxoglou (16) , Marc Willinger (4) , Dimitri Dubois (4)

1 Groupe Sup de Co Montpellier (GSCM) - Montpellier Business School
2 LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221
3 UB - Université de Bourgogne
4 CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier
5 IÉSEG School Of Management [Puteaux]
6 EIEE - European Institute on Economics and the Environment
7 CMCC - Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici [Bologna]
8 EconomiX - EconomiX
9 CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management
10 UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur
11 GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion
12 BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée
13 GAEL - Laboratoire d'Economie Appliquée de Grenoble
14 INED - Institut national d'études démographiques
15 Université de Lille
16 PSE - Paris School of Economics
17 CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne
18 ESC [Rennes] - ESC Rennes School of Business
19 AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques
20 CEE-M - Centre d'Economie de l'Environnement - Montpellier - FRE2010
21 TBS - Toulouse Business School
22 UR - Université de Rennes
23 CEREN - Centre de Recherche sur l'ENtreprise [Dijon]
24 BSB - Burgundy School of Business (BSB) - Ecole Supérieure de Commerce de Dijon Bourgogne (ESC)

There is a significant gap in turnout between young people and older voters. The failure to instill a voting habit at an early age may have long term consequences in terms of future political participation as well as on other civic behaviors. Using a pre-registered online experiment with 3,790 subjects, we implemented behavioral interventions aiming to stimulate youth turnout in the 2022 French presidential election. We also provide evidence on the effect of one behavioral intervention on youth turnout in a less salient election, the French legislative election that took place two months after the Presidential one. The results from the two experiments show the absence of any differences in turnout between the baseline and the treatment conditions. We investigate several mechanisms that can explain our results.

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Rustam Romaniuc, Andrea Guido, Pierre Baudry, Cécile Bazart, Loïc Berger, et al.. The limits of behavioral nudges to increase youth turnout: Experimental evidence from two French elections. 2024. ⟨hal-04677596v2⟩