Do good deeds make bad people?

Sophie Clot, Gilles Grolleau () and Lisette Ibanez
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Sophie Clot: LAMETA - Laboratoire Montpelliérain d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - UM1 - Université Montpellier 1 - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier, Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier

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Abstract: According to the so-called ‘self-licensing effect', committing to a virtuous act in a preceding choice may lead to behave less virtuously in the succeeding decision. Consequently, well-intentioned policies can lead to overall counter-productive effects by licensing people to behave badly in related behaviors. On the other side, motivational crowding theory argues that constraining people to adopt a desirable behavior can backfire. We use of a classroom experiment to test whether a regulatory framework to incentivize individuals to adopt pro-environmental behavior generate similar spillovers in terms of licensing effect than a non-regulatory framework. We show that the way the good deed is caused doesn't seem to influence the licensing effect. Nevertheless, we found that business- and environmental-orientated majors react adversely to the regulatory framework. We show that environmental-orientated students exhibit higher intrinsically motivations than business-orientated ones. Accordingly, we suggest that the licensing effect is more likely to arise when the preceding ‘virtuous' act is freely chosen (respectively regulatory caused) for non-intrinsically (respectively intrinsically) motivated individuals.

Keywords: environment; regulation; self-licensing; voluntary approaches; incentive; altruism; choice behavior; incitation; altruisme; comportement de choix; réglementation environnementale (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Published in European Journal of Law and Economics, 2016, 42 (3), pp.491-513. ⟨10.1007/s10657-014-9441-4⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: Do good deeds make bad people? (2016)
Working Paper: Do Good Deeds Make Bad People? (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01506330

DOI: 10.1007/s10657-014-9441-4

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