Motives for Sharing in Social Networks

Ethan Ligon and Laura Schechter

Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, Working Paper Series from Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley

Abstract: What motivates people in rural villages to share? We first elicit a baseline level of sharing using a standard, anonymous dictator game. Then using variants of the dictator game that allow for either revealing the dictator's identity or allowing the dictator to choose the recipient, we attribute variationin sharing to three different motives. The first of these, directed altruism, is related to preferences, while the remaining two are incentive-related(sanctions and reciprocity). We observe high average levels of sharing in ourbaseline treatment, while variation across individuals depends importantlyon the incentive-related motives. Finally, variation in measured reciprocity within the experiment predicts observed 'real-world' gift-giving, while other motives measured in the experiment do not predict behavior outside the experiment.

Keywords: Social; and; Behavioral; Sciences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-net and nep-soc
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Motives for sharing in social networks (2012)
Working Paper: Motives for sharing in social networks (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdl:agrebk:qt4sn304b6

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