Social norms and market behavior: Evidence from a large population sample

Tobias Riehm, Nicolas Fugger, Philippe Gillen, Vitali Gretschko and Peter Werner

No 21-017, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: We test the importance of social norms for market interactions associated with negative real-world externalities in a large-scale experiment with a heterogeneous population sample from Germany. The majority of experimental participants refuses to trade, thus behaving in a moral way. Our data suggest the importance of norm conformity for the decision to trade as a significant share of buyers and sellers condition market entry on the decisions of others. Moreover, a majority of observers is willing to incur personal costs to sanction trading. Moral behavior is significantly linked to demographic characteristics and stated preferences and attitudes of the participants.

Keywords: Markets; moral behavior; negative externalities; social norms; punishment; large population sample; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D01 D62 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-eur, nep-exp, nep-hrm, nep-isf and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:21017

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