Abstract
By using two decision models based on cognitive social psychology, voting behavior in the 1998 Japanese House of Councilors election was analyzed. JEDS national panel survey (1996-1998 “Japanese Election and Democracy Study” accessible in WWW (http://www.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp/pages/ssjda-e/)) was the source of analysis.
Political party schemas in 1996 and their change indicators between 1996 and 1998 were both highly significant in predicting the 1998 vote, which shows the effectiveness of cognitive accessibility model of voting behavior.
Retrospective voting, which reflects the use of cognitive shortcut in voting decision, was also significant in determining the vote (by multinomial logit analysis). Much unclear was the role of sociotropic judgment on the vote, although the egocentric vote was clearly existent. That is, sociotropic judgement has positive relationship with the retrospective evaluation of the 1998 Hashimoto Cabinet, but its relationship with the vote was slightly negative when controlling the egocentric evaluation of economy as well as other variables. (151 words)
