The Incumbent's Reputation and the Effects of Negative Campaign Advertisement
Resource
政治科學論叢, 38, 113-154
Journal
政治科學論叢
Journal Issue
38
Pages
113-154
Date Issued
2008-12
Date
2008-12
Author(s)
Lien, N.H.
Chou, H.Y.
Abstract
Negative campaign ads have become an indispensable technique in modern day elections. Particularly for one-to-one elections, it is very common to see various ads attacking the other party, broadcast throughout the media. Although much research has been undertaken examining the effects of negative ads, the results are inconclusive and there are still many important issues worthy of further exploration. This paper investigates the effects of these ads on the incumbent's reputation. It also looks at which types of ads are important but were previously neglected by previous empirical research into negative campaign advertising. Based on the expectancy disconfirmation model and the theory of persuasive knowledge, we infer the hypotheses and conduct two experiments to explore the effects of these variables under different contexts: the ad sponsor being the incumbent or the challenger. Results indicate that when the sponsor is the incumbent, it is not beneficial for the incumbent to use attacking ads, as this leads to an increase in self imposed damage to reputation and a decrease in voters' voting intention to a greater degree than for those with lower reputation. Using emotional appeals would decrease the amount of damage done. As for low reputation incumbents, appealing types of advertisement do not make a significant difference to voter responses. When the ad sponsor was the challenger, attacking the high-reputation incumbent generated boomerang effect, causing greater damage to the sponsor, whilst attacking the low-reputation one would generate the victimsyndrome effect, improving voters' target evaluation, attitude, and voting intention toward the target. Thus it is not suitable for the challenger to use negative campaign ads. If he still decides to go with negative ads, rational appeals are more beneficial for him. Besides deceasing potential for self-inflicted damage, rational appeals would either make voters feel more unfavorable towards the targeted candidate or would maintain voters' political participation intent, depending on the incumbent's reputation. The implications of these and other findings are discussed.
Subjects
負面競選廣告；聲譽；訴求型態；期望失驗模式；Negative Campaign Advertisement；Reputation,Appealing Types；Expectancy Disconfirmation Model
Type
journal article