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The purpose of this study is threefold: first, to determine whether civic education has a positive impact on voting intentions among the electorate; second, to establish whether attitudes towards voting behaviour (ATVB) mediate the relationship between civic education and voting intentions; and third, to determine whether educational level moderates the relationship between civic education and voting intentions.

This study adopted a survey research design and a quantitative approach. Data were collected from a sample of 1,450 registered voters from the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria. A regression-based approach was adopted to test the study hypotheses using Hayes-PROCESS Macro 3.5.

The results indicate that civic education is positively associated with voting intentions. Further analysis reveals that ATVB significantly mediates the association between civic education and voting intentions. Additionally, educational level positively moderates the relationship between civic education and voting intentions.

The findings offer implications for governments and democratic institutions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide empirical evidence of the mediating effect of ATVB and the moderating effect of educational level on the relationship between civic education and voting intentions. This study provides useful insights into the factors that influence voting intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether voters consider a candidate’s brand image when evaluating election alternatives. That is, how prominent a role does the candidate brand image have in the decision-making process? As election outcomes are behavior-driven, the goal is to examine the potential relationship between the candidate brand image, the self-brand image and voting intention.

Data were collected for the third week of October 2012 and again for the same time in 2016 – three weeks prior to the US presidential election each year. An online-based nationwide survey was leveraged, followed by correlation, regression and mediation analysis.

Candidate brand image has a role in US presidential elections. In addition, candidate brand image and self-brand image are significantly related to voting intention. In both elections, the losing candidate’s brand image was more of a factor when it came to voting intention, as both candidates’ brand image mediated the relationships between self-brand image and voting intention for all voters.

A link between candidate brand image and voting intention was demonstrated for perhaps the first time. With results showing candidate brand image does relate to the voter’s self-brand image and voting intention, future research should investigate what other brand elements are a factor. There are undoubtedly other factors – some branding-related, others not branding-related – that go into voter decision-making. Because results were stronger for a losing candidate than a winning one, research should also examine whether this occurrence was coincidence or consistent voter behavior.

When voters considered who might best represent themselves, the brand image of the candidate enhanced the likelihood of voting for, or against, the candidate. Therefore, it is highly recommended that campaign managers understand not only the importance of their candidate’s brand image to develop and maintain a positive image among their supporters but also how to highlight what their supporters view as the negative aspects of the opposing candidates’ brand image to increase the lack of affinity for competitors.

This research demonstrates, for the first time, that candidates’ brand image is considered by voters in a US presidential election. In addition, it discovers the role candidate brand image plays in voting intention. Finally, it provides direction for campaign managers to conduct research into candidates as brands to build brand relationships with the electorate.

This study examines the effect of social media marketing on voting intention applying a combination of fuzzy logic methodology and a multidimensional panel data model.

The study adopts a multidimensional panel data method that includes several fixed effects. The dependent variable is a multifaceted construct that measures the participants’ intention to vote. The independent variables are electronic word of mouth (eWOM), customisation (CUS), entertainment (ENT), interaction (INT), trendiness (TRD), candidate’s perceived image (CPI), religious beliefs (RB), gender and age. The grouping variables that signify fixed effects are employment status, level of education, mostly used social media and religion. First, the significance of said fixed effects was tested through an ANOVA process. Then, the main model was estimated, including the significant grouping variables as fixed effects.

Employment status and level of education were significant fixed effects. Also, eWOM, ENT, INT, CPI, RB and gender significantly affected participants’ voting intention.

Being based on a questionnaire that asked participants about how they perceive different aspects of social media, the present study is limited to their perceptions. Therefore, further studies covering the voters’ behaviour in action could be efficient complements to the present study.

The findings could guide the political parties into prioritizing the aspects of social media in forming an effective campaign resulting in being elected.

The findings have the potential to help the public in making better informed decisions when voting. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate applications for social media which are beyond leisure time fillers.

Fuzzy logic and multidimensional panel data estimates are this study’s novelty and originality. Structural equation modelling and crisp linguistic values have been used in previous studies on social media’s effect on voting intent. The former refines the data gathered from a questionnaire, and the latter considers the possibility of including different grouping factors to achieve a more efficient and less biased estimation.

The cultivation and maintenance of a brand is becoming increasingly important as politicians seek to connect with constituents. Through the lens of social cognition and group dynamics, this paper aims to understand the impact of evaluations of politician brands on voter intentions.

Three studies utilize the social cognition constructs of warmth and competence from the stereotype content model (SCM) and Brands as Intentional Agents Framework (BIAF) to evaluate the impact of brand perceptions on voting intentions, comparing fit between the models. The first study establishes the impact of these perceptions on existing politicians. The second study replicates these effects while controlling for party affiliation and extraneous factors and explicitly studies politicians as brands. The third study examines the formation of perceptions and assumptions when full information is unavailable.

Social cognition and group dynamics drive responses to politician brands. The data herein support perceptions of warmth and competence as significant predictors of voting intentions. Dependent upon whether the politician is being evaluated as a brand or a person, BIAF or SCM predicts the dimension that will be most impactful. These patterns persist in the absence of full information. As expected, voting intentions increased significantly when the voter was of the same (vs opposing) party as that of the candidate.

Conducted during an election year, evaluations of politicians are susceptible to the current political climate and the predominantly two party political system in which the studies were conducted. The design of Studies 2 and 3 addresses some of these limitations. Results point toward the interrelated nature of warmth and competence perceptions and the usefulness of applying both BIAF and SCM to understand how voters view politicians and the drivers of voting intentions.

This study evidences the depth to which perceptions of candidates impact voting intent, establishing politicians’ unique position as both brands and people. These findings prove useful in interpreting the outcome of elections this year, and beyond.

Expanding a limited body of existing research, this work contributes to our understanding of the application of SCM within the context of politician brands. As the first concurrent investigation of SCM and BIAF, these findings are of value to political strategists and academics alike. The contribution is augmented by the consideration of the impact of party affiliation and missing information.

The purpose of this paper is to present factors that affect e-voting adoption in the Middle East and, in particular, Jordan. Changing the election voting method for the people in Jordan from traditional voting to interactive voting via the web needs exploration to understand the factors affecting e-voting adoption by citizens. Therefore, this paper reports on a study undertaken to identify the main factors that would influence citizens’ intentions to adopt the use of an e-voting system in Jordan, using an established e-government adoption model and a theoretical framework consisting of the diffusion of innovations (DOI) theory and the technology acceptance model (TAM).

A survey study of 267 Jordanian citizens who were internet users investigated the influence of the aforementioned factors on the adoption and use of e-voting websites. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Contrary to the previous established e-government adoption model, beliefs and website design were not found to be significant predictors of the intention to use e-voting websites. The paper found that trust in government, attitudes, perceived usefulness and complexity were significant factors in Jordanian citizens’ intentions to use e-voting websites.

This is one of few studies to have used an established e-government adoption model to test the adoption of e-voting as one of the e-government applications. In addition, this paper is one of the few to examine the factors that influence the adoption and use of e-voting systems by citizens in the Middle East. Although the previous e-government adoption model showed the impact of attitude to be non-significant on e-government adoption, this paper shows the significant influence of attitudes on citizens’ intentions to use e-voting websites. On the other hand, this paper supports previous e-government adoption studies in showing the importance of including constructs of the DOI theory (relative advantage and complexity) and those related to TAM (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) when considering the topic of e-government adoption in a Middle Eastern country, although previous studies have shown similarities between these constructs.

This study measures to what extent different factors including Islamic religious beliefs influenced Egyptian's voting behavior intentions in the last parliament elections, given the moderating effect of the media and its role in shaping the existence of the Islamic political brand in Egypt. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Qualitative research was initially conducted to modify the Newman and Sheth model to fit the Egyptian culture. A final total of 401 Muslim citizens that participated in the last parliament elections were then surveyed via face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire.

Most factors related to voting for a specific candidate or party seemed to be important for voters' in their decision making, specifically personal events related to the candidate, candidate's image, current events surrounding the elections process, interest in issues and policies and religious beliefs that was added by the authors to the model. The media also had a high level of importance and influence over the relationship between some of the factors affecting voter's decision and voter's behavioral intentions. Overall, citizens demonstrated approach voting behavioral intentions towards the elections process and indicated that they would actively participate in the upcoming elections. Pearson correlations and further analysis were also run to investigate the nature of relationships between the factors understudy and voting behavioral intentions; most of which had significant relationships, as well as the significant role of the media. Some factors were excluded after running stepwise regression for testing the fitness of the model proposed.

Study covering the capital city of Egypt; Cairo only.

It has become important for politicians and governments to understand what are the genuine needs of their societies and what are citizens looking for in political candidates and parties. Political marketing and particularly understanding voting behavior is a booming area that has become an important tool for building political brands as witnessed by this research and how it was used by Islamists to reach voter's and affect their decision making.

This research paper sheds the light on a very contemporary area related to political marketing which is political campaigning and factors affecting voters' intentions given the significant role of candidate's religious beliefs. Furthermore, focusing on the rise of Islamic political parties that are actively becoming important members of the political landscape in the Arab region after a long time of undercover practice and struggle with previous governments before the Arab spring events.

This study aimed to examine the relationships between different uses of Internet modes and political participation, focusing on political information behaviors, including political information seeking and forwarding.

This study used secondary data from the 2016 Korea Media Panel Survey conducted with 8,439 Korean adults.

The results indicated that political participation is generally associated with the use of online news forums, online communities, online services and online information production, but not with the use of social networking sites (SNSs). Additional analyses revealed that the use of different Internet modes has an indirect effect on voting intention through political information seeking. The analysis also showed that a number of sociodemographic characteristics influence political participation.

As one of the first studies to focus on active information behaviors in examining the influence of Internet use, this study enhances the understanding of how human behaviors are shaped by digital technology. By providing guidelines for the use of different modes of the Internet, the findings of this study also have practical implications for efforts to encourage political participation.

This paper evaluates the argument that conditional cash transfer program recipients vote for the incumbent. We also test the hypothesis stating that ceasing to receive the benefit hinders support for the incumbent.

Using a regression discontinuity design, we assess the impact of the Bono de Desarrollo Humano cash transfer program on pro-incumbent voting of each of these four groups.

We did not find a significant impact of the transfer on pro-incumbent vote intention in any of the pairwise comparisons, which suggests that contextual factors determining retrospective voting may play an important role in shaping the relationship between pro-incumbent voting and social policy transfers.

Drawing on quasi-experimental evidence from Ecuador, where the eligibility criteria of the program changed exogenously, we evaluate the impacts of several treatments on pro-incumbent voting. We are able to identify four distinct groups: recipients under both eligibility criteria, nonrecipients under both criteria, new recipients and new nonrecipients.

The purpose of this study is to use role expectation theory to identify potential determinants of user voting avoidance on mobile social media.

Data were collected through a survey of 602 WeChat users, and the proposed model was analysed using structural equation modelling.

Results indicate that user voting avoidance was positively influenced by unfair competition, perceived inauthenticity, perceived information insecurity, over-consumption of renqing (a unique Chinese human relation) and organisation placement in the context of mobile social media.

This study illustrates mobile user voting avoidance from the perspective of role expectation theory and clarifies the importance of avoidance in current voting research.

The purpose of this study is to assess the differences in individual purchasing and voting decisions for livestock products, produced with lower levels of antibiotic use or higher levels of environmental sustainability, by consumers with different degrees of agreement with moral foundation statements.

Data are collected from two national online surveys that were conducted in Canada in 2016 and 2017, including socio-demographic, attitude, belief and stated choice questions. Data are analysed using hierarchical cluster analysis and ordered probit regressions.

Respondents who strongly agree with the individualizing moral foundation statements are more likely to buy more environmentally sustainable milk/yogurt and pork from pigs that are raised with reduced antibiotic use, as compared to respondents who have weaker agreement with the statements. Respondents with stronger agreement with the moral foundation statements are also more likely to vote in favour of stricter livestock environmental standards and disease protocols.

Monitoring people’s moral concerns might help in predicting consumers’ responses to new or different production practices.

Although moral foundations have been linked to other purchase decisions, in this study, the focus is on specific aspects of environmental sustainability and antibiotic use in livestock production. Both of these challenging issues are controversial and facing either regulatory changes (antibiotic use in livestock) or significant livestock production changes (responding to concerns that livestock production is less sustainable than plant production) in most developed countries. Understanding the linkages between fundamental beliefs and probable consumer behaviour will assist in predicting negative or positive outcomes to the regulatory or industry-based changes to livestock production. Differences between an individual’s desire to be able to identify products with certain attributes for purchase vs an individual’s desire to have government regulate industries to higher standards, in both contexts, will also be linked to the individual’s level of moral foundation beliefs.