Paper In Progress
Cluster: Civic Engagement
Gov Lab Managers: Adam Bakalchuk (2021-2022), Deja Jackson (2022-2023)
Research Associates: Giulia Matteucci, Dylan Gooding, Christian Festa, Julia Flam, & Michael Sun
Research Assistants: Lara Carnovale, Dimitri Chernozhukov, Alex Hillenbrand, James Karafin, Yesenia Ramirez, Alexa Sadowski, Fiona Simpson, & Evan Vu
What is the Peer2Power Project?
The Peer2Power project studied the effectiveness of friend-to-friend recruitment of grassroots lobbying in American politics. A growing body of social scientific literature has examined the effects of social pressure on voter turnout, but far fewer studies have considered other forms of civic action. In this project, Lafayette College students developed an original website and iOS app (“Peer2Power”) to facilitate a campus-wide civic engagement competition. Students represented campus clubs and earned points for directly encouraging friends and family members to write to elected officials about any topic they cared deeply about. Despite challenges to competition engagement, preliminary results suggest a meaningful, statistically significant increase in grassroots lobbying efforts among individuals receiving direct encouragement from a friend or family member.