Social Incentives and Voter Turnout: Evidence from the Swiss Mail Ballot System
利用瑞士邮寄投票的自然实验，发现降低投票成本对总体投票率影响不大，但小社区中社会压力缺失导致投票率下降更明显，说明社会激励对部分选民重要。
This paper uses a natural experiment to document the impact of social pressure on voting behavior. The main hypothesis is that social pressure creates incentives to vote for the purpose of being seen at the voting act. This incentive is particularly high in small and close-knit communities. Empirically, I analyze the effect of postal voting on voter participation in Switzerland. Optional postal voting decreased the voting costs, but simultaneously removed the social pressure to vote. In spite of the large reduction in voting costs, the effect on aggregate turnout was small. However, voter participation was more negatively affected in the smaller communities. This lends support to the view that social incentives played a role for certain people's voting decisions.