Responsibility-allevation and effort provision in a gift-exchange experiment

Gary Charness

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: Previous indirect evidence suggests that impulses towards pro-social behavior are diminished when an external authority is responsible for an outcome. The responsibility-alleviation effect states that a shift of responsibility to an external authority dampens internal impulses toward honesty, loyalty, or generosity. In a gift-exchange experiment, we find that subjects respond with more generosity (higher effort) when a wage is determined by a random process than when it is assigned by a third party, indicating that even a slight shift in perceived responsibility for the final payoffs can change behavior. Responsibility-alleviation is a factor in economic environments featuring substantial personal interaction.

Keywords: Responsibility; social behavior; experiment; generosity; Leex (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C91 D63 J20 J52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:322

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