Social norms with private values: Theory and experiments

Giovanna d'Adda, Martin Dufwenberg, Francesco Passarelli and Guido Tabellini

Games and Economic Behavior, 2020, vol. 124, issue C, 288-304

Abstract: We propose a simple theory of social norms that models the distinct influence on behavior of personal values, normative expectations and empirical expectations. The first and second moments of the distribution of normative expectations affect the strength of social norms' pull on behavior. We test the empirical predictions of the model through an experiment based on a variant of the dictator game. Consistent with the theory, we find that normative expectations influence generosity and that higher dispersion of such expectations leads to more variation in giving behavior.

Keywords: Social norms; Partial norms; Normative expectations; Consensus; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825620301275
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:124:y:2020:i:c:p:288-304

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2020.08.012

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().