Effects of Priming on Campaign Volunteer Canvasing Performance: Exploratory Analysis of Four Field Experiments

Abstract

Volunteers are one of the most valuable resources for a political campaign. Little scholarly attention, however, has been dedicated to understanding ways to motivate a campaign volunteer. With limited time, campaigns strive to get the most efficient output from their volunteers. Working in collaboration with two mayoral candidates, four city council candidates, and a candidate for the State House of Representatives, the authors implemented four field experiments to test the effects of a subconscious primed goal on the performance of 158 political campaign volunteers. Applying the findings of prior research on the effects of photo primes in a call center, the authors tested achievement and task-oriented photo primes compared to the absence of a photo prime on the volunteer productivity within the context of door-to-door canvasing. The results indicate that the photo prime intended to instill general achievement statistically outperformed the absence of a photo prime, resulting in more address contact attempts (doors knocked), and may serve as a low to no cost option to maximize volunteer productivity.