IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/diw/diwwpp/dp1644.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is Socially Responsible Production a Normal Good?

Author

Listed:
  • Jana Friedrichsen

Abstract

This paper uses a controlled laboratory experiment to investigate the effect of wealth on individual social responsibility (ISR), defined as choosing a more socially responsible product if a cheaper alternative is available. We find that rich consumers are significantly less likely to engage in ISR than poor consumers. This suggests that socially responsible production conditions may not be normal product attributes.

Suggested Citation

  • Jana Friedrichsen, 2017. "Is Socially Responsible Production a Normal Good?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1644, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
  • Handle: RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1644
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.553081.de/dp1644.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feicht, Robert & Grimm, Veronika & Seebauer, Michael, 2016. "An experimental study of corporate social responsibility through charitable giving in Bertrand markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 88-101.
    2. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    3. Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2010. "Individual and Corporate Social Responsibility," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 77(305), pages 1-19, January.
    4. Markus Kitzmueller & Jay Shimshack, 2012. "Economic Perspectives on Corporate Social Responsibility," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 51-84, March.
    5. Christoph Engel, 2007. "How Much Collusion? A Meta-Analysis Of Oligopoly Experiments," Journal of Competition Law and Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(4), pages 491-549.
    6. Loureiro, Maria L. & Lotade, Justus, 2005. "Do fair trade and eco-labels in coffee wake up the consumer conscience?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 129-138, April.
    7. Mark Pigors & Bettina Rockenbach, 2016. "Consumer Social Responsibility," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(11), pages 3123-3137, November.
    8. Danz, David & Engelmann, Dirk & Kübler, Dorothea, 2012. "Do Legal Standards Affect Ethical Concerns of Consumers? An Experiment on Minimum Wages," Working Papers 12-03, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    9. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Who buys social responsibility
      by Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo on 2017-03-05 18:03:40

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Stehr, Frauke & Werner, Peter, 2021. "Making Up for Harming Others — An Experiment on Voluntary Compensation Behavior," VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics 242396, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Fehr, Dietmar & Rau, Hannes & Trautmann, Stefan T. & Xu, Yilong, 2020. "Inequality, fairness and social capital," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    3. Björn Bartling & Vanessa Valero & Roberto A. Weber, 2018. "Is Social Responsibility a Normal Good?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7263, CESifo.

    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. Fernandes, Maria Eduarda & Valente, Marieta, 2021. "What you get is not what you paid for: New evidence from a lab experiment on negative externalities and information asymmetries," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    2. Engelmann, Dirk & Friedrichsen, Jana & Kübler, Dorothea, 2018. "Fairness in Markets and Market Experiments," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 64, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    3. Koppel, Hannes & Regner, Tobias, 2019. "What drives motivated agents: The ‘right’ mission or sharing it with the principal?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    4. Friedrichsen, Jana & Engelmann, Dirk, 2018. "Who cares about social image?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 61-77.
    5. Vecchi, Martina, 2022. "Groups and socially responsible production: An experiment with farmers," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 372-392.
    6. Roberto A. Weber & Sili Zhang, 2023. "What Money Can Buy: How Market Exchange Promotes Values," CESifo Working Paper Series 10809, CESifo.
    7. Feicht, Robert & Grimm, Veronika & Seebauer, Michael, 2016. "An experimental study of corporate social responsibility through charitable giving in Bertrand markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 88-101.
    8. Sören Harrs & Bettina Rockenbach & Lukas M. Wenner, 2022. "Revealing good deeds: disclosure of social responsibility in competitive markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(5), pages 1349-1373, November.
    9. Björn Bartling & Vanessa Valero & Roberto Weber, 2019. "On the scope of externalities in experimental markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(3), pages 610-624, September.
    10. Jacobs, Martin & Requate, Till, 2016. "Bertrand-Edgeworth markets with increasing marginal costs and voluntary trading: Experimental evidence," Economics Working Papers 2016-01, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Department of Economics.
    11. Björn Bartling & Vanessa Valero & Roberto A. Weber, 2018. "Is Social Responsibility a Normal Good?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7263, CESifo.
    12. Hariskos, W. & Königstein, M. & Papadopoulos, K.G., 2022. "Anti-competitive effects of partial cross-ownership: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 399-409.
    13. Justus Haucap & Christina Heldman & Holger A. Rau, 2022. "Gender and Cooperation in the Presence of Negative Externalities," CESifo Working Paper Series 9614, CESifo.
    14. Etilé, Fabrice & Teyssier, Sabrina, 2013. "Corporate social responsibility and the economics of consumer social responsibility," Review of Agricultural and Environmental Studies - Revue d'Etudes en Agriculture et Environnement (RAEStud), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 94(2).
    15. Masiliūnas, Aidas & Nax, Heinrich H., 2020. "Framing and repeated competition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 604-619.
    16. Jia, Z. Tingting & McMahon, Matthew J., 2020. "Being watched in an investment game setting: Behavioral changes when making risky decisions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    17. Hannes Koppel & Tobias Regner, 2014. "Corporate Social Responsibility in the work place," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(3), pages 347-370, September.
    18. Nobuyuki Hanaki & Aidas Masiliunas, 2021. "Market Concentration and Incentives to Collude in Cournot Oligopoly Experiments," ISER Discussion Paper 1131, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    19. Jan Schmitz, 2019. "When Two Become One: How Group Mergers Affect Solidarity," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-42, July.
    20. Nisvan Erkal & Lata Gangadharan & Boon Han Koh, 2022. "By chance or by choice? Biased attribution of others’ outcomes when social preferences matter," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 413-443, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social responsibility; consumer behavior; market experiment; wealth effect;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility
    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • J81 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Working Conditions
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:diw:diwwpp:dp1644. 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: Bibliothek (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diwbede.html .

    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.