Zsófia Papp's latest study in Representation examines how citizens in five European democracies (France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, and Poland) evaluate multidimensional legislative responsiveness. Utilising a conjoint experiment with nationally representative samples, the research causally identifies the electoral impact of policy, allocation, service, and symbolic responsiveness. The analysis reveals a robust pattern of asymmetric accountability: voters consistently penalise underperformance relative to peer legislators more severely than they reward equivalent overperformance. This finding provides strong empirical support for a loss-aversion mechanism in electoral politics, where voters experience representational shortfalls as losses compared to a neutral reference point. While all four dimensions influence vote choice, substantive efforts – particularly policy and resource allocation – exert greater influence than symbolic actions.

These results hold across diverse electoral systems, suggesting that asymmetric evaluation is a general feature of voter behaviour rather than an institutional artifact. The findings indicate that legislators face powerful incentives to prioritise risk minimisation and the avoidance of failure over the pursuit of exceptional performance, as the electoral rewards for the latter are comparatively modest and occasionally statistically insignificant.