Motives for sharing in social networks

Ethan Ligon and Laura Schechter

No 120376, CUDARE Working Papers from University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Abstract: What motivates people in rural villages to share? We first elicit a baseline level of sharing using a standard, anonymous dictator game. Then using variants of the dictator game that allow for either revealing the dictator's identity or allowing the dictator to choose the recipient, we attribute variation in sharing to three different motives. The first of these, directed altruism, is related to preferences, while the remaining two are incentive-related (sanctions and reciprocity). We observe high average levels of sharing in our baseline treatment, while variation across individuals depends importantly on the incentive-related motives. Finally, variation in measured reciprocity within the experiment predicts observed `real-world' gift-giving, while other motives measured in the experiment do not predict behavior outside the experiment.

Keywords: Community/Rural/Urban Development; Political Economy; Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2011-12-15
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/120376/files/CUDARE%201120%20Ligon.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Motives for sharing in social networks (2012)
Working Paper: Motives for Sharing in Social Networks (2011)
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:ags:ucbecw:120376

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.120376

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CUDARE Working Papers from University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().