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This study aims to investigate whether objective and subjective rationality affects individual voters’ use of accounting information and if such use affects voting behavior. While prior accounting studies assume voter rationality concerning financial performance and political outcomes, this study distinguishes between two types of voters: objective rational voters (who make voting decisions about multiple alternatives based on objective information) and subjective rational voters (who make decisions based on their subjective values, and thus do not explore information or explore only information biased toward one alternative). This study expects that accounting information can influence the voting behavior of objective and subjective rational voters.

Focusing on the 2020 Osaka Metropolitan Plan Referendum, this study used an online survey conducted on 768 respondents after the referendum.

This study finds that objective rational voters use accounting information more than subjective rational voters, voters who used accounting information were more likely to vote against the referendum, and voting behavior is not directly affected by the type of rationality of voters; rather, objective rational voters are more likely to use accounting information that has a mediating effect on voting behavior.

The results advance the understanding of public sector accounting research and practices by providing evidence of the individual voter’s use of accounting information and their voting behavior in political contexts.

This study aims to provide evidence of how budget officers use non-financial and accrual-based cost information in the budgeting process and how the usage of this information is influenced by financial constraints.

A randomized survey-based field experiment investigating budget officers in 546 Japanese local governments (LGs) was conducted. This allowed us to identify the budget officers' decision-making in the public sector budgeting process by creating and analyzing primary data with regression models.

We found that budget officers suppress budget amounts based on non-financial information of good performances. Under fiscal constraints, officers further reduce budget amounts using information on high accrual-based costs and poor non-financial performance.

Our survey-based field experiment allowed us to obtain primary data from officers making budget decisions. To the best of our knowledge, this study provides the first evidence that non-financial good and poor performance information and accrual-based cost information affect budget officers' decision-making under financial constrain.