IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0236715.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Environmental adversity is associated with lower investment in collective actions

Author

Listed:
  • N Lettinga
  • P O Jacquet
  • J-B André
  • N Baumand
  • C Chevallier

Abstract

Environmental adversity is associated with a wide range of biological outcomes and behaviors that seem to fulfill a need to favor immediate over long-term benefits. Adversity is also associated with decreased investment in cooperation, which is defined as a long-term strategy. Beyond establishing the correlation between adversity and cooperation, the channel through which this relationship arises remains unclear. We propose that this relationship is mediated by a present bias at the psychological level, which is embodied in the reproduction-maintenance trade-off at the biological level. We report two pre-registered studies applying structural equation models to test this relationship on large-scale datasets (the European Values Study and the World Values Survey). The present study replicates existing research linking adverse environments (both in childhood and in adulthood) with decreased investment in adult cooperation and finds that this association is indeed mediated by variations in individuals’ reproduction-maintenance trade-off.

Suggested Citation

  • N Lettinga & P O Jacquet & J-B André & N Baumand & C Chevallier, 2020. "Environmental adversity is associated with lower investment in collective actions," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-23, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0236715
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0236715
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236715
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236715&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0236715?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jo Blanden, 2004. "Family Income and Educational Attainment: A Review of Approaches and Evidence for Britain," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 20(2), pages 245-263, Summer.
    2. S. Nageeb Ali & Charles Lin, 2013. "Why People Vote: Ethical Motives and Social Incentives," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(2), pages 73-98, May.
    3. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Myers, Caitlin Knowles, 2010. "Why volunteer? Evidence on the role of altruism, image, and incentives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 911-920, December.
    4. Iris Kesternich & James P. Smith & Joachim K. Winter & Maximiliane Hörl, 2020. "Early‐Life Circumstances Predict Measures of Trust among Adults: Evidence from Hunger Episodes in Post‐War Germany," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(1), pages 280-305, January.
    5. Kington, R. & Lillard, L. & Rogowski, J., 1997. "Reproductive history, socioeconomic status, and self-reported health status of women aged 50 years or older," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 87(1), pages 33-37.
    6. Gerber, Alan S. & Huber, Gregory A. & Doherty, David & Dowling, Conor M., 2016. "Why People Vote: Estimating the Social Returns to Voting," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(2), pages 241-264, April.
    7. Andreas Fagereng & Magne Mogstad & Marte Rønning, 2021. "Why Do Wealthy Parents Have Wealthy Children?," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 129(3), pages 703-756.
    8. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2006. "Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 23-48, Spring.
    9. Daniel Nettle, 2010. "Dying young and living fast: variation in life history across English neighborhoods," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 21(2), pages 387-395.
    10. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    11. Kerwin Kofi Charles & Erik Hurst, 2003. "The Correlation of Wealth across Generations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(6), pages 1155-1182, December.
    12. Martin Korndörfer & Boris Egloff & Stefan C. Schmukle, 2015. "A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior," Working Papers 1601, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    13. Livingstone, Sonia M. & Lunt, Peter K., 1992. "Predicting personal debt and debt repayment: Psychological, social and economic determinants," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 111-134, March.
    14. Menchik, Paul L. & Weisbrod, Burton A., 1987. "Volunteer labor supply," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 159-183, March.
    15. James Andreoni & Nikos Nikiforakis & Jan Stoop, 2017. "Are the Rich More Selfish than the Poor, or Do They Just Have More Money? A Natural Field Experiment," NBER Working Papers 23229, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/3dibv4nee98jotv3e6saibabm is not listed on IDEAS
    17. Ziemek, Susanne, 2006. "Economic analysis of volunteers' motivations--A cross-country study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 532-555, June.
    18. Lea, Stephen E. G. & Webley, Paul & Levine, R. Mark, 1993. "The economic psychology of consumer debt," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 85-119, March.
    19. Daniel Nettle & Agathe Colléony & Maria Cockerill, 2011. "Variation in Cooperative Behaviour within a Single City," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 6(10), pages 1-8, October.
    20. Rosseel, Yves, 2012. "lavaan: An R Package for Structural Equation Modeling," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 48(i02).
    21. Martin Korndörfer & Boris Egloff & Stefan C Schmukle, 2015. "A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-48, July.
    22. Lawrance, Emily C, 1991. "Poverty and the Rate of Time Preference: Evidence from Panel Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 99(1), pages 54-77, February.
    23. Martin Korndörfer & Boris Egloff & Stefan C. Schmukle, 2015. "A Large Scale Test of the Effect of Social Class on Prosocial Behavior," SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research 808, DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pierre O. Jacquet & Farid Pazhoohi & Charles Findling & Hugo Mell & Coralie Chevallier & Nicolas Baumard, 2021. "Predictive modeling of religiosity, prosociality, and moralizing in 295,000 individuals from European and non-European populations," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-12, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fehr, Dietmar & Rau, Hannes & Trautmann, Stefan T. & Xu, Yilong, 2020. "Inequality, fairness and social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    2. Pierre O. Jacquet & Farid Pazhoohi & Charles Findling & Hugo Mell & Coralie Chevallier & Nicolas Baumard, 2021. "Predictive modeling of religiosity, prosociality, and moralizing in 295,000 individuals from European and non-European populations," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-12, December.
    3. Gereke, Johanna & Schaub, Max & Baldassarri, Delia, 2018. "Ethnic diversity, poverty and social trust in Germany: Evidence from a behavioral measure of trust," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 13(7), pages 1-15.
    4. Rockenbach, Bettina & Tonke, Sebastian & Weiss, Arne R., 2021. "Self-serving behavior of the rich causes contagion effects among the poor," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 289-300.
    5. Matías Strehl Pessina, 2022. "Sectores de altos ingresos y preferencias por redistribución," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 22-15, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    6. Johanna Gereke & Max Schaub & Delia Baldassarri, 2018. "Ethnic diversity, poverty and social trust in Germany: Evidence from a behavioral measure of trust," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(7), pages 1-15, July.
    7. Elisabeth Gsottbauer & Daniel Müller & Samuel Müller & Stefan T. Trautmann & Galina Zudenkova, 2020. "Social class and (un)ethical behavior: Causal versus correlational evidence," Working Papers 2020-10, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    8. Antinyan, Armenak & Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Grigoryan, Aleksandr, 2022. "Charitable giving, social capital, and positional concerns," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    9. Antinyan, Armenak & Baghdasaryan, Vardan & Grigoryan, Aleksandr, 2021. "Charitable giving, social capital and positional concerns," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2021/33, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    10. Wang, Hongxia & Wang, Yuhui & Nie, Jia & Lei, Li, 2021. "Family socioeconomic status and internet altruistic behavior among Chinese adolescents: The mediating effect of personal belief in a just world and emotional intelligence," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 121(C).
    11. Antonio Tintori & Giulia Ciancimino & Rossella Palomba & Cristiana Clementi & Loredana Cerbara, 2021. "The Impact of Socialisation on Children’s Prosocial Behaviour. A Study on Primary School Students," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(22), pages 1-14, November.
    12. Tony Beatton & Benno Torgler, 2018. "Volunteering and life or financial shocks: does income and wealth matter?," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 50(19), pages 2190-2209, April.
    13. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Myers, Caitlin Knowles, 2010. "Why volunteer? Evidence on the role of altruism, image, and incentives," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(11-12), pages 911-920, December.
    14. Ting Wang & Xue Wang & Tonglin Jiang & Shiyao Wang & Zhansheng Chen, 2021. "Under the Threat of an Epidemic: People with Higher Subjective Socioeconomic Status Show More Unethical Behaviors," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(6), pages 1-14, March.
    15. Felipe González-Arango & Javier Corredor & María Angélica López-Ardila & María Camila Contreras-González & Juan Herrera-Santofimio & Jhonathan Jared González, 2022. "The duality of poverty: a replication of Mani et al. (2013) in Colombia," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 39-73, February.
    16. Damiano Fiorillo & Nunzia Nappo, 2017. "Formal volunteering and self-perceived health. Causal evidence from the UK-SILC," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(2), pages 112-138, April.
    17. Gaganis, Chrysovalantis & Hasan, Iftekhar & Pasiouras, Fotios, 2020. "National culture and housing credit," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 19-41.
    18. Koyama, Yuna & Fujiwara, Takeo & Isumi, Aya & Doi, Satomi, 2020. "Degree of influence in class modifies the association between social network diversity and well-being: Results from a large population-based study in Japan," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    19. Katarzyna Samson, 2018. "Trust as a mechanism of system justification," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(10), pages 1-22, October.
    20. Yujie Zhao & Xinyue Zhou, 2022. "Income and geographically constrained generosity," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(2), pages 766-787, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0236715. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.