Background:

From an empirical case, we studied the decision of the people to voluntarily participate as poll officials on the election day in Mexico. In this regard, it was interesting to analyze whether this participation was motivated by a prosocial behavior, where the citizen contributed to the existence of a public good through involvement in democracy. If this is the case, the behavior of Homo Economicus would be ruled out.

Methods:

Given the lack of information to do this study at the individual level, it was decided to do so at a more aggregated level, the municipal level. By means of a logistic regression, the probability of the citizens within a municipality having a high acceptance rate to participate in the polling day, as poll officials, is explored. Specifically, we study to what extent the dependent variable is explained by variables associated with a pro-social behavior or a Homo Economicus behavior.

Results:

The results show that, indeed, part of the participation is motivated by citizen responsibility and social commitment; that is, a divergent behavior of the Homo Economicus. The other part of the participation responds to non-explicit incentives that would be associated with self-interest.

Conclusions:

This article concludes that a part of those who accept the invitation to participate as poll officials do so in response to pro-social behavior; but for the rest, it is not possible to rule out Homo Economicus behavior. All of this information points to the need to continue working to consolidate the quality of Mexican democracy.