Replication Data for: Information Behavior and Political Preferences (British Journal of Political Science)

This article shows that citizens consider policy positions for the formation of their political preferences when they actively seek and find high-quality information, while they dismiss passively acquired and low-quality information. We develop an extended theory of information and political preferences that incorporates the process of information acquisition and its connection with information quality. A novel experimental design allows us to separate the effects on political preferences due to information behavior as an activity from those due to selective exposure to information. We apply our design in a laboratory experiment with a diverse group of participants using the example of issue voting and European integration on the occasion of the 2014 elections to the European Parliament.