Replication Data for: Following the Money? How Donor Information Affects Public Opinion about Initiatives

Citizens are typically uninformed about politics and know little about issues at stake in direct democracy elections. Government efforts to inform electorates include requiring donors to initiative campaigns to report their activities and then circulating such donor information to citizens. What effects does donor information have on citizens’ opinions? We conduct a survey experiment where respondents express opinions about initiatives in a real-world election. We manipulate whether they receive donor information, party cues, policy information from a nonpartisan expert, or no additional information. We find that donor information influences citizens’ opinions in the aggregate, with effects comparable to party cues and policy information. However, donor information has negligible effects on uninformed citizens, who have difficulty inferring donors’ policy interests and connecting them to their own. These results underscore the potential benefits of efforts to inform electorates via disclosure laws and highlight disparities in their effectiveness for informed and uninformed citizens.

普通民众通常对政治不甚了解，对直接民主（direct democracy）选举中牵涉的核心议题也知之甚少。政府为提升选民信息素养所采取的举措包括要求全民公投倡议运动（initiative campaigns）的捐赠者申报其活动，并将此类捐赠者信息向民众公示。那么此类捐赠者信息会对民众的政治态度产生何种影响？本研究开展一项调查实验（survey experiment）：让受访者针对真实选举中的全民公投倡议表达态度，并通过实验操控向其提供的信息类型——包括捐赠者信息、政党线索（party cues）、无党派专家提供的政策信息，或不提供额外信息。研究结果显示，捐赠者信息会从整体层面影响民众的政治态度，其效应强度与政党线索、政策信息不相上下。不过，捐赠者信息对信息匮乏的民众几乎无影响——这类群体难以推断捐赠者的政策立场，也无法将其与自身诉求相联系。本研究结果既凸显了通过信息披露法规提升选民信息素养的潜在价值，也揭示了此类举措在知情与不知情民众间的效果差异。