Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow! - Field Experiment Evidence on Voluntary Donations

Francisco Alpizar Rodriguez and Peter Martinsson

No 452, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: We conducted a field experiment in a protected area to explore the effects of conformity to a social reference versus a comparable, but imposed, suggested donation. As observed before, we see visitors conforming to the changing social reference. On the other hand, the treatment in which we suggested a donation resulted in lower shares of visitors donating, compared to the social reference treatment, and lower conditional donations even compared to the control. We concluded that visitors look at their peers as a reference to conform to, but partially reject being confronted with an imposed suggestion on how to behave.

Keywords: Conformity; donation; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D10 D60 Q50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2010-06-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-ltv and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Working Paper: Don't Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow! Field Experiment Evidence on Voluntary Donations (2010)
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