Experimental Evidence of the Benefits and Risks of Credit Claiming and Pork Busting

As appropriations earmarks return to Congress, every legislator faces a decision: pursue or refuse congressionally-mandated federal spending projects. This decision is likely influenced by public messaging concerns. We theorize that both credit claiming for federal projects and position-taking against spending projects (“pork busting”) can benefit legislators as they look to improve future electoral returns. We field a nationally-representative survey experiment to estimate the effect of credit claiming and pork busting messages on the perceived effectiveness, fiscal responsibility, and overall approval of an unnamed member of Congress. We find that respondents are likely to penalize the representative’s approval assessment when presented with an outparty message strategy. Conversely, respondents are likely to increase the representative’s personal trait assessments when presented with an inparty message strategy. We expand on these results in an additional analysis and find that these trends persist when controlling for other partisan and demographic factors. We discuss our results in light of traditional expectations, potential mechanisms, and future directions for related research.