The Drivers of Social Preferences: Evidence from a Nationwide Tipping Field Experiment

Abstract Models of job tournaments and competitive workplaces more generally predict that while individual effort may increase as competition intensifies between workers, the incentive for workers to cooperate with each other diminishes. We report on a field experiment conducted with workers from a fishing community in Toyama Bay, Japan. Our participants are employed in three different aspects of fishing. The first group are fishermen, the second group are fish wholesalers (or traders), and the third group are staff at the local fishing coop. Although our participants have much in common (e.g., their common relationship to the local fishery and the fact that they all live in the same community), we argue that they are exposed to different amounts of competition on-the-job and that these differences explain differences in cooperation in our experiment. Specifically, fishermen and traders, who interact in more competitive environments are significantly less cooperative than the coop staff who face little competition on the job. Further, after accounting for the possibility of personality-based selection, perceptions of competition faced on-the-job and the treatment effect of job incentives explain these differences in cooperation to a large extent.

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Gender Differences in Shirking: Monitoring or Social Preferences? Evidence from a Field Experiment

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.2432397 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Per Johansson ◽

Arizo Karimi ◽

Peter Nilsson

Keyword(s):

Gender Differences ◽

Field Experiment ◽

Social Preferences

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The Drivers of Social Preferences: Evidence from a Nationwide Tipping Field Experiment

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.3473381 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Bharat Chandar ◽

Uri Gneezy ◽

John A. List ◽

Ian Muir

Keyword(s):

Field Experiment ◽

Social Preferences

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Testing Social Preferences for an Economic “Bad”: An Artefactual Field Experiment*

Scandinavian Journal of Economics ◽

10.1111/j.1467-9442.2012.01745.x ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 115 (1) ◽

pp. 27-61 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Deborah Kerley Keisner ◽

Kent D. Messer ◽

William D. Schulze ◽

Homa Zarghamee

Keyword(s):

Field Experiment ◽

Social Preferences

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Using Artefactual Field Experiments to Learn about the Incentives for Sustainable Forest Use in Developing Economies

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.101.3.329 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 101 (3) ◽

pp. 329-333 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Maarten Voors ◽

Erwin Bulte ◽

Andreas Kontoleon ◽

John A List ◽

Ty Turley

Keyword(s):

Public Goods ◽

Field Experiment ◽

Field Experiments ◽

Social Preferences ◽

Developing Economies ◽

Public Goods Game ◽

Forest Reserve ◽

Social Controls ◽

Forest Use ◽

Sustainable Forest Use

We implement a public goods game and a social intervention modeled after a public goods game in rural Sierra Leone near the Gola Forest Reserve. We also collect demographic, economic and forest conservation data on households in the area. We use this data to assess the mapping of social preferences from the artefactual field experiment (AFE) into real world behavior. We find evidence of heterogeneity in shifting factors between the AFE, the field experiment, and conservation outcomes. We also find evidence that social controls like war violence and witchcraft may explain some of this correlation.

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Institutional preferences, social preferences and cooperation: Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural China

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics ◽

10.1016/j.socec.2020.101554 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 87 ◽

pp. 101554

Author(s):

Xiaojun Yang ◽

Zihan Nie ◽

Jianying Qiu ◽

Qin Tu

Keyword(s):

Field Experiment ◽

Social Preferences ◽

Rural China

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The Importance of Being Marginal: Gender Differences in Generosity

The American Economic Review ◽

10.1257/aer.103.3.586 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 103 (3) ◽

pp. 586-590 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Stefano DellaVigna ◽

John A List ◽

Ulrike Malmendier ◽

Gautam Rao

Keyword(s):

Gender Differences ◽

Field Experiment ◽

Social Preference ◽

Social Preferences ◽

Men And Women ◽

Potential Explanation ◽

The Social

Do men and women have different social preferences? Previous findings are contradictory. We provide a potential explanation using evidence from a field experiment. In a door-to-door solicitation, men and women are equally generous, but women become less generous when it becomes easy to avoid the solicitor. Our structural estimates of the social preference parameters suggest an explanation: women are more likely to be on the margin of giving, partly because of a less dispersed distribution of altruism. We find similar results for the willingness to complete an unpaid survey; women are more likely to be on the margin of participation.

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