POLITICAL CONSUMERISM: THE ROLE OF POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF VOTING PREFERENCES OF PAKISTANI VOTERS

This study investigates the structural relationship between political socialization, emotional response, social identity, and voting intentions of Pakistani voters. The voting intentions are subjected to individuals' partisan preferences developed over the life cycle. Socialization process may cause stability or change of partisan preferences. This research addresses the following questions: (1) Does political socialization has impact on emotional response and social identity? (2) Does political socialization directly impact the voting intentions? (3) Do the emotional response and social identity mediates the relationship between political socialization and voting intentions? The proposed conceptual model is analyzed with data collected through self-administrated survey questionnaire. The data (n=318) is collected from national assembly constituencies, Gujrat-Pakistan (NA-68 and NA-69) by employing stratified random sampling technique. The proposed conceptual model is tested with SMARTPLS (a variance based analysis technique). The result reveals that political socialization positively impacts the social identity and emotional response; whereas there is no support found for direct impact of political socialization on voting intentions. Emotional response and social identity positively and significantly impact the voting intentions. Moreover, social identity and emotional response significantly mediate between political socialization and voting intentions. The results validate the contemporary perspective on political socialization that there is inclination of voters towards the social and emotional aspects. These findings help the political parties and leaders to formulate their socialization strategies by keeping in view the importance of social and emotional ties of voters