Based on this analysis and also my readings on VAAs, I would like to finish my thesis by offering a few ideas that can be considered when further studying VAAs and their effects on voting behaviour in the future.
Firstly, even though it does not depend that much on a researcher or analyst, I think that it would be very important to have panel data also on national elections. Panel data, compared to simple survey data gives more opportunities to study the effect of VAAs even more as same people are questioned before and after elections.
Secondly, I would also like to offer the idea of using different research methods to tackle the question of VAAs and their effect on voting behaviour. Besides quantitative methods it would be also interesting to study the same topic by using qualitative methods. One option would be letting people do the VAA and after that do focus group interview where they can discuss and open up about the results of the VAA and how they compare to their opinions and expectations. I find this especially interesting in the time of alternative facts and populism where people can be easily distracted by what they see and read in traditional, alternative, and also social media.
Thirdly, I would propose the same idea I was once playing with myself: doing laboratory experiment and measuring how people’s opinions change in a small amount of time.
Compared to panel data, there is a small time gap between answering questions before and after doing VAA, which means that the effect VAA alone is exposed way more than for example in this research.
Summary
The aim of this master thesis was to analyse the effect of voting advice applications (VAAs) on voting behaviour. I was measuring the effect of VAAs on turnout, on choice set and on final vote choice. I was studying those questions based on two datasets: panel data on European Parliament elections in 2014 (for all three research questions) and simple survey data on national elections in 2015 (for turnout section).
Statistically speaking, the results of my thesis were insignificant, however, based on my analysis I could show the typical effect of bottleneck to the turnout, also the fact that the effect of VAA actually depends on type of elections (European Parliament ones or national ones). However, the effect I got based on my analysis, was rather contradictory as I would have expected based on theory stronger effect on European Parliament elections.
My analysis showed that VAAs do not have strong effect on changing the choice set.
Also, there was positive effect on changing final vote choice, however, the effect was not that strong to consider it statistically significant. Therefore, I claim that the effect of VAA was not that strong based on that dataset as even with small number of cases it would have still appeared.
References
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Non-exclusive license for reproduction of thesis and providing access of thesis to the public
I, Pille Ivask,
herewith grant the University of Tartu a free permit (non-exclusive licence) to:
The effect of voting advice applications of Estonian voters’ voting behavior
supervised by Mihkel Solvak,
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Tartu, 22.05.2017