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Abstract

Engaging college students in their campus and community is a goal shared by many in higher education and government. Yet engaging students can be a difficult task. In this paper, we extend the existing literature on student engagement to include civic engagement. We test one possible method of mobilizing student participation—learning about the importance of participation in an event. We analyze whether providing students with information about the competitive, important nature of events may spur participation. We present results from a survey experiment on how learning about an upcoming competitive midterm election and competitive basketball season may motivate students to become engaged. We find that learning about the basketball season spurs the likelihood of student basketball attendance, and that learning about the election changes student considerations about what issues are important in the election.

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