Anti-social behaviour and economic decision-making: panel experimental evidence in the wake of COVID-19

Paul M. Lohmann, Elisabeth Gsottbauer, Jing You and Andreas Kontoleon

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We systematically examine the acute impact of exposure to a public health crisis on anti-social behaviour and economic decision-making using unique experimental panel data from China, collected just before the outbreak of COVID-19 and immediately after the first wave was overcome. Exploiting plausibly exogenous geographical variation in virus exposure coupled with a dataset of longitudinal experiments, we show that participants who were more intensely exposed to the virus outbreak became more anti-social than those with lower exposure, while other aspects of economic and social preferences remain largely stable. The finding is robust to multiple hypothesis testing and a similar, yet less pronounced pattern emerges when using alternative measures of virus exposure, reflecting societal concern and sentiment, constructed using social media data. The anti-social response is particularly pronounced for individuals who experienced an increase in depression or negative affect, which highlights the important role of psychological health as a potential mechanism through which the virus outbreak affected behaviour.

Keywords: anti-social behaviour; coronavirus; natural experiment; panel data; risk preferences; social media data; time preferences; Covid-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D64 D81 D91 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2023-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cna, nep-exp and nep-mfd
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 1, February, 2023, 206, pp. 136 - 171. ISSN: 0167-2681

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Journal Article: Anti-social behaviour and economic decision-making: Panel experimental evidence in the wake of COVID-19 (2023)
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