Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) have literally taken Europe by storm in the last decade. Millions of voters consult voting recommendations of VAA websites prior to casting their ballots. However, little is known about how these online tools affect voters’ political behavior. Until now, observational studies on VAA effects have faced severe limitations due to endogeneity issues associated with VAA use and results are therefore still inconclusive. To overcome the inherent selection bias in VAA use, we conducted a randomized field experiment in Italy to deduce causal effects of VAA use on voters’ political preferences. This is embedded in a representative, pre/post electoral web-panel fielded in cooperation with the Italian National Election Study (ITANES). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a VAA-experiment is conducted on a nationally representative sample in the context of a real election. The lack of familiarity with VAAs among Italian voters further enhances the potential of our research design
