Pablo Brañas-Garza () (Universidad de Granada) Ramón Cobo-Reyes () (Universidad de Granada) Maria Paz Espinosa () (Universidad del País Vasco) Natalia Jiménez () (Universidad de Alicante) Giovanni Ponti () (Università di Ferrara)
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This paper explores the role of social integration on altruistic behavior. To this aim, we develop a two-stage experimental protocol based on the classic Dictator Game. In the first stage, we ask a group of 77 undergraduate students in Economics to elicit their social network; in the second stage, each of them has to unilaterally decide over the division of a fixed amount of money to be shared with another anonymous member in the group. Our experimental design allows to control for other variables known to be relevant for altruistic behavior: framing and friendship/acquaintance relations. Consistently with previous research, we find that subjects favor their friends and that framing enhances altruistic behavior. Once we control for these effects, social integration (measured by betweenness, a standard centrality measure in network theory) has a positive effect on giving: the larger social isolation within the group, the more likely it is the emergence of selfish behavior. These results suggest that information on the network structure in which subjects are embedded is crucial to account for their behavior.
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Paper provided by University of the Basque Country - Department of Foundations of Economic Analysis II in its series DFAEII Working Papers with number
200604.
Order Information: Postal: Dpto. de Fundamentos del Análisis Económico II, Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad del País Vasco, Avda. Lehendakari Aguirre 83, 48015 Bilbao, Spain Email:
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Find related papers by JEL classification: C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
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