Animal Welfare Ballot Initiatives and the Vote-Buy Gap

Abstract We provide empirical evidence to explain the apparent discrepancy between consumption choices and voting outcomes for a recent high-profile animal welfare case: California’s ban of eggs produced with caged hens. The model juxtaposes the private good aspect of buying decisions with the public good aspect of voting, and yields testable propositions for the vote-buy gap. These implications are evaluated in a revealed-preferences setting using a novel combination of voting and egg-purchase data. Results show that the vote-buy gap depends on the egg price differential, and the distribution of consumers’ heterogeneous preference for animal welfare issues.