Personal norms — and not only social norms — shape economic behavior

Zvonimir Bašić and Eugenio Verrina

Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 239, issue C

Abstract: We propose a simple utility framework and design a novel two-part experiment to study the relevance of personal norms across various economic games and settings. We show that personal norms — together with social norms and monetary payoff — are highly predictive of individuals’ behavior. Moreover, they are: (i) distinct from social norms across a series of economic contexts; (ii) robust to an exogenous increase in the salience of social norms; and (iii) complementary to social norms in predicting behavior. Our findings support personal norms as a key driver of economic behavior.

Keywords: Personal norms; Social norms; Social image; Elicitation method; Normative conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D63 D64 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272724001919
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Personal norms — and not only social norms — shape economic behavior (2024)
Working Paper: Personal norms — and not only social norms — shape economic behavior (2023)
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:eee:pubeco:v:239:y:2024:i:c:s0047272724001919

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105255

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().