Keywords

Field experiment, gender, political ambition, political participation

Abstract

Do men and women respond to various party recruitment messages similarly? Working with the Utah County Republican Party, we designed a field experiment in which we invited over 11,600 male and female party activists to attend a free, party-sponsored “Prospective Candidate Information Seminar” by randomizing different invitation messages. We found that women were half as likely as men to respond to recruitment—log on to the seminar website for more information, register for the seminar, and attend the seminar. While we found some suggestive evidence about what recruitment messages may particularly motivate women or men vis-a-vis a control message, our findings are inconclusive because of a low response rate. ` This first attempt to experimentally test gendered reactions to recruitment in a sample of active party supporters provides a valuable baseline for future research.

Original Publication Citation

“Does the message matter? A field experiment on political party recruitment” (with Jessica Preece).Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2:1-10, 2015.