Replication Data for: How Do Voters Hold Politicians Accountable for Personal Welfare? Evidence of a Self-Serving Bias

Abstract: \"Examining a government’s record is difficult. This is a problem for voters who want to hold governments accountable. One solution is for voters to hold governments accountable for changes in their personal welfare. Yet, it is often unclear whether changes in personal welfare are caused by government policies or voters’ own actions. Since voters have a desire to protect their self-image, this ambiguity might fuel a self-serving bias in attribution. That is, voters might take personal responsibility for positive changes in personal welfare and hold the government responsible for negative changes. Based on data from election surveys and survey experiments, this article shows that voters attribute responsibility for personal welfare in this self-serving way. This hurts democratic accountability because voters do not reward governments (enough) for improving their personal welfare.\" Instructions for reproduction of tables and figures: (1) Download all files to the same folder. (2) Set directory to this folder in Stata. (3) Run script study1_replication.do, study2_replication.do and study3_replication.do to reproduce tables and figures related to study 1, 2 and 3 respectively. Notes: This reproduces tables and figures in the article as well as the tables and figures in the online appendices. Stata 15 (IC) was used to produce the figures and tables in the article.

摘要：评估政府的执政政绩并非易事，这对于期望问责政府的选民而言是一大难题。一种可行的解决思路是，让选民以个人福祉的变化为依据对政府进行问责。然而，个人福祉的变化究竟是源于政府政策，还是选民自身的行为，往往难以厘清。鉴于选民均有维护自身自我形象的意愿，这种归因层面的模糊性可能会催生归因自利偏差：即选民可能会将个人福祉的正向变化归因于自身努力，而将负向变化归咎于政府。本文基于选举调查与调查实验获取的数据，证实选民确实会以这种自利的方式对个人福祉的责任进行归因。这一现象会损害民主问责机制，因为选民并不会（充分地）因政府改善了个人福祉而对其予以嘉奖。图表复现操作指南：(1) 将所有文件下载至同一文件夹内。(2) 在Stata软件中将工作目录设置为该文件夹。(3) 分别运行study1_replication.do、study2_replication.do与study3_replication.do脚本，即可复现对应研究1、研究2与研究3的相关图表。备注：本次复现涵盖正文及在线附录中的全部图表与表格。本文的图表与表格均通过Stata 15 (IC)制作生成。