TY - JOUR
T1 - Places and Preferences
T2 - A Longitudinal Analysis of Self-Selection and Contextual Effects
AU - Gallego, Aina
AU - Buscha, Franz
AU - Sturgis, Patrick
AU - Oberski, Daniel
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Economic and Social Research Council through the grant for the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM; grant reference: RES-576-47-5001-01) and from the Marie Curie Actions of the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme under REA grant agreement no. 334054 (PCIG12-GA-2012-334054).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Cambridge University Press.
PY - 2014/7/7
Y1 - 2014/7/7
N2 - Contextual theories of political behaviour assert that the contexts in which people live influence their political beliefs and vote choices. Most studies, however, fail to distinguish contextual influence from self-selection of individuals into areas. This article advances understanding of this controversy by tracking the left-right position and party identification of thousands of individuals over an eighteen-year period in England before and after residential moves across areas with different political orientations. There is evidence of both non-random selection into areas and assimilation of new entrants to the majority political orientation. These effects are contingent on the type of area an individual moves into and contextual effects are weak and dominated by the larger effect of self-selection into areas.
AB - Contextual theories of political behaviour assert that the contexts in which people live influence their political beliefs and vote choices. Most studies, however, fail to distinguish contextual influence from self-selection of individuals into areas. This article advances understanding of this controversy by tracking the left-right position and party identification of thousands of individuals over an eighteen-year period in England before and after residential moves across areas with different political orientations. There is evidence of both non-random selection into areas and assimilation of new entrants to the majority political orientation. These effects are contingent on the type of area an individual moves into and contextual effects are weak and dominated by the larger effect of self-selection into areas.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84916912499&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/S0007123414000337
DO - 10.1017/S0007123414000337
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84916912499
SN - 0007-1234
VL - 46
SP - 529
EP - 550
JO - British Journal of Political Science
JF - British Journal of Political Science
IS - 3
ER -