Revisiting the Impact of Impure Public Goods on Consumers' Prosocial Behavior: A Lab Experiment in Shanghai

Qinxin Guo, Enci Wang, Yongyou Nie and Junyi Shen
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Qinxin Guo: Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University, Japan
Enci Wang: School of Economics, Shanghai University, China
Yongyou Nie: School of Economics, Shanghai University, China

No DP2018-22, Discussion Paper Series from Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University

Abstract: In this study, we implemented a dictator game experiment to examine how the increase of the public characteristic in an impure public good affects individuals’ prosocial behavior. A within-subject design was used in the experiment. The dictator game was repeated six times with an impure public good introduced in four of them. We observe that the increase of the public characteristic in an impure public good partly crowds out individuals’ subsequent donations, which could be explained by a seemingly “mental accounting” mental process. In addition, we also find that the selfish behavior of individuals in dictator games with impure public goods, to some extent, has an inertia influence on their subsequent donations when the impure public good is removed.

Keywords: Impure public goods; Dictator game; Multiple dictators; Mental accounting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2018-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-soc
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https://www.rieb.kobe-u.ac.jp/academic/ra/dp/English/DP2018-22.pdf First version, 2018 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Revisiting the impact of impure public goods on consumers’ prosocial behavior: A lab experiment in Shanghai (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kob:dpaper:dp2018-22

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