- A-Z
- Jena Economic Resea...
- Volume 10
- Reciprocity under m...
- Autor(in)
- Erschienen
- 22. Dezember 2016
- Nummer des Discussion-Papers
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2016-024
- Schlagwort(e)
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experiments
moral wiggle room
pro-social behavior
reciprocity
self-image concerns
social preferences
trust game
- Zusammenfsg.
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We analyze reciprocal behavior when moral wiggle room exists. Dana et al. (2007) show that giving in a dictator game is only partly due to distributional preferences as the giving rate drops when situational excuses for selfish behavior are provided. Our binary trust game closely follows their design. Only a preceding stage (safe outside option vs. enter the game) is added in order to introduce reciprocity. We find significantly higher rates of selfish choices in our treatments that feature moral wiggle room manipulations (between 37.5% and 45%) in comparison to the baseline (6.25%). It seems that reciprocal behavior is not only due to people liking to reciprocate but also because they feel obliged to do so.
- article pub. typess JER
- Research article
- article languages JER
- Englisch
- JEL-Classification for JER
- C72 - Noncooperative Games ; C91 - Laboratory, Individual Behavior ; D03 - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles†; D80 - General