The role of social information, market framing, and diffusion of responsibility as determinants of socially responsible behavior

Bernd Irlenbusch and David J. Saxler

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2019, vol. 80, issue C, 141-161

Abstract: A recent debate raises questions on what shapes socially responsible behavior. In an experiment, we disentangle major determinants, social information, buyer/seller framing and diffusion of responsibility, and provide evidence on how they influence decisions when decision-makers can gain money by harming uninvolved parties. Our results show that buyer/seller framing tends to encourage subjects to make purely self-interested decisions. In contrast, social information about others who behaved socially responsible increases social responsibility. When comparing individual decisions with joint decisions, we observe no effect of diffusion of responsibility on socially responsible behavior.

Keywords: Social responsibility; Social information; Buyer/seller framing; Diffusion of responsibility; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804318303653
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:soceco:v:80:y:2019:i:c:p:141-161

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2019.04.001

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 ().