Romaniuc Rustam, Guido Andrea, Baudry Pierre, Bazart Cécile, Berger Loïc, Berlin Noémi, Bonein Aurélie, Bouhlel Imen, Boun My Kene, Chessa Michela, Crosetto Paolo, Dagorn Etienne, David Quentin, Farva Etienne, Farvaque Etienne, Festré Agnès, François Abel, Ibanez Lisette, Igersheim Herrade, Jacquement Nicolas, Lebon Isabelle, Lefebvre Mathieu, L'Haridon Olivier, Li Danlin, Loheac Youenn, Luchini Stéphane, Muller Laurent, Pourieux Matthieu, Priour Elven, Roussel Sébastien, Sekeris Petros, Stéphan Maïté, Spiegelman Eli, Sutan Angela, Turmunkh Uyanga, Vardaxoglou Laurence, Willinger Marc, Dubois Dimitri, (2025), The limits of behavioral nudges to increase youth turnout: Experimental evidence from two French elections. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
There is a significant gap in turnout between young people and older voters. The failure to instill a voting habit at an early age may have long term consequences in terms of future political participation as well as on other civic behaviors. Using a pre-registered online experiment with 3790 subjects, we implemented behavioral interventions aiming to stimulate youth turnout in the 2022 French presidential election? We rely an innovative incentive scheme to measure their consequences on (self-reported) actual voting behavior. We also provide evidence on the effect of one behavioral intervention on youth turnout in a less salient election, the French legislative election that took place two months after the Presidential one. The results from the two experiments show the absence of any differences in turnout between the baseline and the treatment conditions. We investigate several mechanisms that can explain our results.