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Would I Care if I Knew? Image Concerns and Social Confirmation in Giving

Alexander Kritikos and Jonathan Tan

No 8739, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper experimentally investigates the nature of image concerns in gift giving. For this, we test variants of dictator and impunity games where the influences of social preferences on behavior are kept constant across all games. Givers maximize material payoffs by pretending to be fair when receivers do not know the actual surplus size, implying that portraying an outward appearance of norm compliance matters more than actual compliance. In impunity games, receivers can reject gifts with no payoff consequence to givers. In the face of receivers' feedback, some givers ensure positive feedback by donating more while some avoid negative feedback by not giving at all. Removing feedback reduces the incentive to give altogether. Differing behavior in the four games implies that social confirmation plays a crucial role in the transmission of image concerns in giving.

Keywords: image; experiment; impunity game; dictator game; social confirmation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2014-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - substantially revised version published as 'Influence in the Face of Impunity' in: Economics Letters, 2016, 141, 119-121.

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