Does Social Exchange Increase Voluntary Cooperation?

Simon Gächter (), Ernst Fehr () and Christiane Kment

Kyklos, 1996, vol. 49, issue 4, pages 541-54

Abstract: There is a lot of empirical and experimental evidence that people give considerable amounts to charities and contribute to public goods. In many cases, fellow citizens get to know the contributions of the donators. This suggests that cooperative behavior is--at least partly--driven by desire to gain social approval. In this paper, an experimental design is developed that allows to test the hypothesis that social exchanges between voluntary cooperation and social approval enhance cooperative behavior in the presence of free-riding incentives. The authors' results indicate that, among strangers, the opportunity for social exchanges does not increase cooperation rates. Copyright 1996 by WWZ and Helbing & Lichtenhahn Verlag AG

Date: 1996
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