ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates whether users follow Google's advice and click on websites listed at the top of Google Search returns. As a test of motivated reasoning in click behavior, we use the position variable—measuring what position the websites are listed in the Google rankings—as a dependent variable in a series of models to see what encourages someone to dig deeper into results. The chapter estimates two separate regression models with separate predictors, but each shows what subject or search return characteristics correlate with clicking on a given website. It supplements the experimental results with 2012 American National Election Study (ANES) Direct Democracy Supplement data, which asks questions about whether or not respondents are involved in politics, whether or not they commonly use political media, and socioeconomic demographics. The chapter uses nationally representative survey data from the 2012 American National Election Study to investigate factors that correlate with searching for information about ballot measures online.
