Altruism in the (Social) Network

Pablo Brañas Garza, Ramón Cobo Reyes, Maria Paz Espinosa, Natalia Jiménez () and Giovanni Ponti ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ramon Cobo-Reyes and Pablo Brañas-Garza

No 1988-088X, DFAEII Working Papers from University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II

Abstract: This paper explores the role of social integration on altruistic behavior. To this aim, we develop a two-stage experimental protocol based on the classic Dictator Game. In the first stage, we ask a group of 77 undergraduate students in Economics to elicit their social network; in the second stage, each of them has to unilaterally decide over the division of a fixed amount of money to be shared with another anonymous member in the group. Our experimental design allows to control for other variables known to be relevant for altruistic behavior: framing and friendship/acquaintance relations. Consistently with previous research, we find that subjects favor their friends and that framing enhances altruistic behavior. Once we control for these effects, social integration (measured by betweenness, a standard centrality measure in network theory) has a positive effect on giving: the larger social isolation within the group, the more likely it is the emergence of selfish behavior. These results suggest that information on the network structure in which subjects are embedded is crucial to account for their behavior.

Keywords: altruism; social integration; social networks; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006-11
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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