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Responsibility-Allevation and Effort Provision in a Gift-Exchange Experiment

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Author Info
Gary Charness

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Abstract

Previous indirect evidence suggests that impulses towards pro-social behavior are diminished when an external authority is responsible for an outcome. The responsibility-alleviation effect states that a shift of responsibility to an external authority dampens internal impulses toward honesty, loyalty, or generosity. In a gift-exchange experiment, we find that subjects respond with more generosity (higher effort) when a wage is determined by a random process than when it is assigned by a third party, indicating that even a slight shift in perceived responsibility for the final payoffs can change behavior. Responsibility-alleviation is a factor in economic environments featuring substantial personal interaction.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra in its series Economics Working Papers with number 322.

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Date of creation: Sep 1998
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Handle: RePEc:upf:upfgen:322

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Related research
Keywords: Responsibility; social behavior; experiment; generosity; Leex;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
J52 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation

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This page was last updated on 2009-12-25.

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