Group Image Concerns

Arno Apffelstaedt, Gönül Doğan () and Fabian Hoffmann ()
Additional contact information
Gönül Doğan: University of Cologne
Fabian Hoffmann: University of Cologne

No 324, ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: We introduce a novel concept, group image concerns, showing that individuals change their behavior and are willing to incur personal costs to cultivate a positive image of their groups. We develop an experimental method to identify and quantify group image concerns, and conduct a series of laboratory and online experiments to measure them in three distinct domains. In the first two experiments focused on charitable behavior, participants donate more when their contributions are publicly associated with their group, despite their individual identity remaining private. They also pay significant amounts to keep low donations from other group members private and to make high donations public. These findings emerge for students in the laboratory, using university affiliation as their group identity, as well as for online participants from the general U.S. population, using religious affiliation as their group identity. Additional online experiments explore group image concerns among Democrats and Republicans regarding their group’s knowledge of the U.S. national anthem, as a measure of patriotism, and among U.S. students concerning their university’s reputation for intelligence in solving matrix completion tasks. We isolate group image concerns from individual image concerns and benchmark them against individual image concerns in our laboratory experiment. Our results establish group image concerns as an important driver of individual behavior and a significant source of utility across various domains.

Keywords: social identity and behavior; image concerns; experiments; charitable and prosocial behavior; intelligence; political identity; religious identity; real effort (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D01 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 115 pages
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-soc and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_324_2024.pdf First version, 2024 (application/pdf)

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:ajk:ajkdps:324

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany Niebuhrstrasse 5, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECONtribute Office ().