Policies for increasing prosocial behavior : evidence from three experimental studies[Politiques publiques pour favoriser les comportements prosociaux : résultats à partir de trois études expérimentales]

The essays contained in this dissertation use empirical evidence to address two issues which are critically important given our growing understanding of the relationship of social preferences to economic growth and well-being at the country level: the foundations of prosocial behavior and the impact of policies designed to increase it. Levels of prosocial behavior have often been taken as a given, fixed, factor, but these essays provide evidence that they are subject to change from policy interventions. Given that there are few interventions specifically focused on trust and cooperation, there may be large scope for improving welfare by increasing the policy focus on this issue, and these essays provide evidence that this is indeed the case. Chapter 1 addresses the foundations of pro-social behavior using different frames in requests for a public good contribution, and shows that information on the social norm is the most potent motivator of public good contribution. In Chapter 2 provides empirical and theoretical evidence from a large project that pro-social behavior at the community level, in contributing to local public services, depends on the anticipated efficacy of that behavior. Chapter 3 provides new evidence on the impact of trust on the individual level, and shows that a childhood training program that increased trust, as well as improving attention and reducing delinquency, set off a chain of events resulting in better long-term outcomes for individuals in terms of education, criminality, and economic performance.