| Summary: | 碩士 === 東吳大學 === 經濟學系 === 107 === In an era of information explosion, people often depend on various public opinion discussions on the media as a reference when they participate in politics. Therefore, although the results of pre-vote poll do not necessarily reflect the final vote count, they provides candidates’ direction of adjusting campaign strategy. Candidates and their staff rely on different media not only to convey attractive political views to voters, but also through debate with or slamming opponents on media to obtain support from voters. The main purpose of this study is to use game theory to analyze the cost of smearing in two-stage elections, and to discuss the implications of smearing strategy.
We applied the two-stage sub-game model combining with the concept of the game theory, and estimated the strategic interaction between the candidates. Assuming that positive policy effort is less costly than smear tactic, and that the cost of a smear campaign increases significantly as the value of the smear attack increases, our analysis revealed that candidates will adjust campaign strategy according to their innate talents.
Candidates with a high level of positive policy advocacy will invest the most in positive policy advocacy, rather than investing in negative smear tactic, because he knows that opponent may be constrained by the cost of negative smear attacks. On the contrary, candidates familiar with or proficient in negative smear attacks, would devote most resources to smearing their opponents in order to have a higher chance of winning.
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