Compulsory Voting and Individual Voting Behavior. An Experimental Study (Working title)

Declining turnout is often considered as a problem to the functioning of western-style democracies. Scholars in the tradition of Arendt Lijphart (1997) argue that compulsory voting could help to overcome obstacles accompanied with low turnout rates. In my dissertation I raise three different research questions with respect to the possible effects of mandatory voting laws on individual voting behavior.

(1) How does compulsory voting affect the individual decision to turn out in elections with asymmetrical distributed information?

(2) How does compulsory voting affect individual willingness to invest in costly information?

(3) How does compulsory voting affect individual information processing in electoral campaigns?