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Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games

Author

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  • Emin Karagözoğlu

    (Department of Economics, Bilkent University, 06800 Çankaya-Ankara, Turkey)

  • Elif Tosun

    (Department of Economics and Business, University of Pompeu Fabra, C/Ramón Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

We experimentally investigated the effects of the possibility of taking in the dictator game and the choices of passive players between the dictator game and the taking game on the distribution decisions of active players. Our main findings support our hypothesis: when the dictator game is not exogenously given but chosen by the receivers (or passive players), this makes them accountable, which leads to less giving by dictators. We also conducted an online survey to gain further insights about our experimental results. Survey participants predicted most of the observed behavior in the experiment and explained the factors that might have driven the predicted behavior using reasoning similar to ours. Our results provide a new perspective for the dependence of giving in the dictator game on contextual factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:13:y:2022:i:6:p:74-:d:962491
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Valerio Capraro & Roberto Di Paolo & Veronica Pizziol, 2023. "Assessing Large Language Models' ability to predict how humans balance self-interest and the interest of others," Papers 2307.12776, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2024.

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