IDENTIFYING SOCIAL NORMS USING COORDINATION GAMES: WHY DOES DICTATOR GAME SHARING VARY?

IDENTIFYING SOCIAL NORMS USING COORDINATION GAMES: WHY DOES DICTATOR GAME SHARING VARY?

We introduce an incentivized elicitation method for identifying social norms that uses simple coordination games. We demonstrate that concern for the norms we elicit and for money predict changes in behavior across several variants of the dictator game, including data from a novel experiment and fro...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the European Economic Association Vol. 11; no. 3; pp. 495 - 524
Main Authors: Krupka, Erin L., Weber, Roberto A.
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Oxford Wiley-Blackwell 01-06-2013
Oxford University Press
Subjects:
Behavior
C72
C91
D64
Economic theory
Experiments
Game theory
Monetary dynamics
Money
Norms
Preferences
Social norms
Sociology
Studies
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Summary:We introduce an incentivized elicitation method for identifying social norms that uses simple coordination games. We demonstrate that concern for the norms we elicit and for money predict changes in behavior across several variants of the dictator game, including data from a novel experiment and from prior published laboratory studies, that are unaccounted for by most current theories of social preferences. Moreover, we find that the importance of social norm compliance and of monetary considerations is fairly constant across different experiments. This consistency allows prediction of treatment effects across experiments, and implies that subjects have a generally stable willingness to sacrifice money to take behaviors that are socially appropriate.
Bibliography:.
Acknowledgments: The authors thank the Ford Foundation, IZA, and Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Behavioral Decision Research for financial support. We also gratefully acknowledge support from the research priority program at the University of Zurich “Foundations of Human Social Behavior.” We thank Nicholas Bardsley, Colin Camerer, Cristina Bicchieri, Ted O'Donoghue, Tanga McDaniel, Stefano DellaVigna, Ulrike Malmendier, anonymous referees, and participants at several workshops, seminars, and conferences for helpful comments and suggestions. Krupka is a Research Fellow at IZA.
The editor in charge of this paper was Stefano DellaVigna
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ISSN:1542-4766
1542-4774
DOI:10.1111/jeea.12006