Are Social Preferences Stable over Time?

Fredrik Carlsson, Olof Johansson-Stenman () and Khanh Nam Pham ()
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Khanh Nam Pham: University of Gothenburg, Sweden,and Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics, Vietnam

No 13, Working Papers from Development and Policies Research Center (DEPOCEN), Vietnam

Abstract: We use a combination of two natural experiments and one field experiment tomeasure people’s prosocial behavior in terms of voluntary money and labor time contributions to an archetypicalpublic good – a bridge – in rural Vietnam, at three different points in time from 2005 to 2010. Since the experiments are far apart in time, potentially confounding effects of moral licensing and moral cleansing are presumably small, if at all existent. We find a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between voluntary contributions in these experiments, whether correcting for other covariates or not.This result suggests that prosocial preferences are at least partly stable over long periods of time.

Keywords: Natural experiment; field experiment; preference stability; social preferences; moral licensing; moral cleansing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19 pages
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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