IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v60y2022i5p1449-1469.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Misinformedness about the European Union and the Preference to Vote to Leave or Remain

Author

Listed:
  • Julia Partheymüller
  • Sylvia Kritzinger
  • Carolina Plescia

Abstract

European politicians have become increasingly concerned about the possible distorting effects of citizens not only being uninformed, but systematically misinformed about the European Union (EU). Against this background, this study assesses the role of EU knowledge in shaping the preference to vote to leave or remain in a (hypothetical) referendum on EU membership using cross‐national survey data that were collected simultaneously in eight EU countries during the run‐up to the 2019 EP elections. The surveys included a newly designed item battery of EU knowledge capturing both the accuracy as well as confidence in knowledge of the respondents. The results show that misinformedness is associated with a preference to leave the EU, the uninformed citizens tend to be undecided or not intending to vote, while the well‐informed prefer to remain. Overall, our findings contribute to the ongoing debates about the role of misinformation in politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Julia Partheymüller & Sylvia Kritzinger & Carolina Plescia, 2022. "Misinformedness about the European Union and the Preference to Vote to Leave or Remain," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(5), pages 1449-1469, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:60:y:2022:i:5:p:1449-1469
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13316
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13316
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.13316?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andreas Follesdal & Simon Hix, 2006. "Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Majone and Moravcsik," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 533-562, September.
    2. Muriel Niederle & Lise Vesterlund, 2011. "Gender and Competition," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 601-630, September.
    3. repec:bla:jcmkts:v:44:y:2006:i::p:533-562 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Logan Dancey & Geoffrey Sheagley, 2013. "Heuristics Behaving Badly: Party Cues and Voter Knowledge," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(2), pages 312-325, April.
    5. Park, C Whan & Mothersbaugh, David L & Feick, Lawrence, 1994. "Consumer Knowledge Assessment," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 21(1), pages 71-82, June.
    6. Michael J. Hanmer & Kerem Ozan Kalkan, 2013. "Behind the Curve: Clarifying the Best Approach to Calculating Predicted Probabilities and Marginal Effects from Limited Dependent Variable Models," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(1), pages 263-277, January.
    7. James N. Druckman & Mary C. McGrath, 2019. "The evidence for motivated reasoning in climate change preference formation," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 9(2), pages 111-119, February.
    8. Banducci, Susan & Giebler, Heiko & Kritzinger, Sylvia, 2017. "Knowing more from less: how the information environment increases knowledge of party positions," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 47(3), pages 571-588.
    9. Pietro Ortoleva & Erik Snowberg, 2015. "Overconfidence in Political Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(2), pages 504-535, February.
    10. Banducci, Susan & Giebler, Heiko & Kritzinger, Sylvia, 2017. "Knowing More from Less: How the Information Environment Increases Knowledge of Party Positions," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(3), pages 571-588, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Florian Stoeckel & Vittorio Mérola & Jack Thompson & Benjamin Lyons & Jason Reifler, 2024. "Public perceptions and misperceptions of political authority in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 25(1), pages 42-62, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Katjana Gattermann & Claes H De Vreese, 2017. "The role of candidate evaluations in the 2014 European Parliament elections: Towards the personalization of voting behaviour?," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 447-468, September.
    2. Simon Richter & Sebastian Stier, 2022. "Learning about the unknown Spitzenkandidaten: The role of media exposure during the 2019 European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 23(2), pages 309-329, June.
    3. Florian Stoeckel & Vittorio Mérola & Jack Thompson & Benjamin Lyons & Jason Reifler, 2024. "Public perceptions and misperceptions of political authority in the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 25(1), pages 42-62, March.
    4. Cheng, Ing-Haw & Hsiaw, Alice, 2022. "Distrust in experts and the origins of disagreement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    5. Giebler, Heiko & Banducci, Susan & Kritzinger, Sylvia, 2017. "New perspectives on information and electoral competition," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 52(4), pages 429-435.
    6. Lichteblau, Josephine & Giebler, Heiko & Wagner, Aiko, 2020. "Do parties perceive their voter potentials correctly? Reconsidering the spatial logic of electoral competition," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 65, pages 1-1.
    7. Andreadis Ioannis & Giebler Heiko, 2018. "Validating and Improving Voting Advice Applications: Estimating Party Positions Using Candidate Surveys," Statistics, Politics and Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(2), pages 135-160, December.
    8. Giebler, Heiko & Meyer, Thomas M. & Wagner, Markus, 2021. "The changing meaning of left and right: supply- and demand-side effects on the perception of party positions," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 31(2), pages 243-262.
    9. Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa, 2020. "Competitive Preferences among Asians in the U.S," IZA Discussion Papers 13913, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Maxime Menuet & Petros G. Sekeris, 2021. "Overconfidence and conflict," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(4), pages 1483-1499, October.
    11. José de Sousa & Guillaume Hollard, 2021. "From Micro to Macro Gender Differences: Evidence from Field Tournaments," Post-Print hal-03389151, HAL.
    12. Thomas Plümper & Eric Neumayer & Katharina Gabriela Pfaff, 2021. "The strategy of protest against Covid‐19 containment policies in Germany," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2236-2250, September.
    13. Richard Hyman & Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick, 2020. "(How) can international trade union organisations be democratic?," Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research, , vol. 26(3), pages 253-272, August.
    14. Younghan Jung & Kayoung Park & Junyong Ahn, 2019. "Sustainability in Higher Education: Perceptions of Social Responsibility among University Students," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(3), pages 1-14, March.
    15. Cornaglia, Francesca & Drouvelis, Michalis & Masella, Paolo, 2019. "Competition and the role of group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 136-145.
    16. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    17. Buser, Thomas & Ranehill, Eva & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2021. "Gender differences in willingness to compete: The role of public observability," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    18. Sakaue, Katsuki, 2018. "Informal fee charge and school choice under a free primary education policy: Panel data evidence from rural Uganda," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 112-127.
    19. Kessel, Dany & Mollerstrom, Johanna & van Veldhuizen, Roel, 2021. "Can simple advice eliminate the gender gap in willingness to compete?," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 138, pages 1-1.
    20. Fanny Landaud & Son Thierry Ly & Éric Maurin, 2020. "Competitive Schools and the Gender Gap in the Choice of Field of Study," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 55(1), pages 278-308.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:60:y:2022:i:5:p:1449-1469. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.