Tournament outcomes and prosocial behaviour

Michael P Kidd, Aaron Nicholas and Birendra Rai

Journal of Economic Psychology, 2013, vol. 39, issue C, 387-401

Abstract: Does participation in a tournament influence prosocial behaviour in subsequent interactions? We designed an experiment to collect data on charitable donations made by participants out of their earnings from a real-effort tournament. We varied the earnings associated with ranks across our treatments thereby allowing us to observe donations by participants who end up at different ranks but have the same earnings. Prior to finding out how well they performed, participants were also asked to report their expected rank. Controlling for differences in effort and earnings, participants who were ranked first donated significantly more than others, supporting the view that positive affect from winning may increase generosity. However, we find that this effect diminishes when the difference between realised and expected ranks are controlled for, lending support to the idea that positive surprise from winning also increases generosity.

Keywords: Tournaments; Prosocial behaviour; Affect; Charitable giving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D64 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:39:y:2013:i:c:p:387-401

DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2013.05.011

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