Prosocial behavior in the time of COVID-19: The effect of private and public role models

Martin Abel and Willa Brown

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2022, vol. 101, issue C

Abstract: In public good provision and other collective action problems, people are uncertain about how to balance self-interest and prosociality. Actions of others may inform this decision. We conduct an experiment to test the effect of watching private citizens and public officials acting in ways that either increase or decrease the spread of the coronavirus. For private role models, positive examples lead to a 34% increase in donations to the CDC Emergency Fund and a 20% increase in learning about COVID-19-related volunteering compared to negative examples. For public role models these effects are reversed. Negative examples lead to a 29% and 53% increase in donations and volunteering, respectively, compared to positive examples.

Keywords: COVID-19; Role models; Public goods; Prosociality; Norm activation model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804322001136
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Prosocial Behavior in the Time of COVID-19: The Effect of Private and Public Role Models (2020)
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:soceco:v:101:y:2022:i:c:s2214804322001136

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2022.101942

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().