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Tournament outcomes and prosocial behaviour

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  • Kidd, Michael
  • Nicholas, Aaron
  • Rai, Birendra

Abstract

Does participation in a tournament influence prosocial behaviour in subsequent interactions? We designed an experiment to collect data on charitable donations made by participants out of their earnings from a real-effort tournament. We varied the earnings associated with ranks across our treatments thereby allowing us to observe donations by participants who end up at different ranks but have the same earnings. Prior to finding out how well they performed, participants were also asked to report their expected rank. Controlling for differences in effort and earnings, participants who were ranked first donated significantly more than others, supporting the view that positive affect from winning may increase generosity. However, we find that this effect diminishes when the difference between realised and expected ranks are controlled for, lending support to the idea that positive surprise from winning also increases generosity.

Suggested Citation

  • Kidd, Michael & Nicholas, Aaron & Rai, Birendra, 2013. "Tournament outcomes and prosocial behaviour," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 387-401.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:39:y:2013:i:c:p:387-401
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2013.05.011
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    4. Pablo Hernandez-Lagos & Dylan Minor & Dana Sisak, 2017. "Do people who care about others cooperate more? Experimental evidence from relative incentive pay," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(4), pages 809-835, December.
    5. Jacqueline Chen Chen & Tony Tam & Yen-sheng Chiang, 2019. "The Rise of Merit-based Inequality Acceptance After Exposure to Competition: Experimental Evidence among Chinese University Students," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 144(2), pages 707-728, July.
    6. Christian Kellner & David Reinstein & Gerhard Riener, 2017. "Conditional generosity and uncertain income: Evidence from five experiments," Discussion Papers 1707, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    7. Nelson, Katherine M. & Schlüter, Achim & Vance, Colin, 2017. "Distributional preferences and donation behavior among marine resource users in Wakatobi, Indonesia," Ruhr Economic Papers 690, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    8. Kellner, Christian & Reinstein, David & Riener, Gerhard & Sanders, Michael, 2015. "Giving and Probability," Economics Discussion Papers 13794, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    9. Xu Gong & Alan G Sanfey, 2017. "Social rank and social cooperation: Impact of social comparison processes on cooperative decision-making," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(4), pages 1-14, April.
    10. Kellner, Christian & Reinstein, David & Riener, Gerhard, 2015. "Stochastic income and conditional generosity," DICE Discussion Papers 197, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    11. Jung, SeEun & Vranceanu, Radu, 2019. "Competitive compensation and subjective well-being: The effect of culture and gender," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 90-108.
    12. Luisa Herbst, 2016. "Who Pays to Win Again? The Joy of Winning in Contest Experiments," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2016-06, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    13. Kellner, Christian & Reinstein, David & Riener, Gerhard, 2019. "Ex-ante commitments to “give if you win” exceed donations after a win," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 109-127.
    14. Bauer, Kevin, 2020. "How did we do? The impact of relative performance feedback on intergroup hostilities," SAFE Working Paper Series 281, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Tournaments; Prosocial behaviour; Affect; Charitable giving;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

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