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Social preferences are stable over long periods of time

Author Info

  • Carlsson, Fredrik

    ()

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Johansson-Stenman, Olof

    ()

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

  • Pham, Khanh Nam

    ()

    (Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University)

Abstract

We measure people’s prosocial behavior, in terms of voluntary money and labor time contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge, and in terms of voluntary money contributions in a public good game, using the same non-student sample in rural Vietnam at four different points in time from 2005 to 2011. Two of the experiments are natural experiment, one is a field experiment and one is a public good experiment. Since the experiments were conducted far apart in time, the potentially confounding effects of moral licensing and moral cleansing are presumably small, if existing at all. Despite large contextual variations, we find a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between voluntary contributions in these experiments, whether correcting for other covariates or not. This suggests that pro-social preferences are fairly stable over long periods of time and contexts.

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File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2077/29170
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Paper provided by University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers in Economics with number 531.

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Length: 24 pages
Date of creation: 30 Apr 2012
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:hhs:gunwpe:0531
Contact details of provider: Postal:
Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, Box 640, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG, Sweden

Phone: 031-773 10 00
Web page: http://www.handels.gu.se/econ/

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Keywords: natural field experiment; preference stability; social preferences; moral licensing; moral cleansing.;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
  • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

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Cited by:

  1. Gallier, Carlo & Reif, Christiane & Römer, Daniel, 2015. "Consistent or balanced? On the dynamics of voluntary contributions," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-060 [rev.], ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research.
  2. Giacomo Degli Antoni & Gianluca Grimalda, 2014. "Groups and trust: Experimental evidence on the Olson and Putnam hypotheses," Econometica Working Papers wp57, Econometica.
  3. Joan Costa-i-Font & Frank Cowell, 2015. "European Identity and Redistributive Preferences," CESifo Working Paper Series 5412, CESifo Group Munich.
  4. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2016. "The Many Faces of Human Sociality:Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'Econométrie et d'Economie politique (DEEP) 16.01, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, DEEP.
  5. Gallier, Carlo & Reif, Christiane & Römer, Daniel, 2014. "Consistent or balanced? On the dynamics of voluntary contributions," ZEW Discussion Papers 14-060, ZEW - Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung / Center for European Economic Research.
  6. Stephen V. Burks & Daniele Nosenzo & Jon Anderson & Matthew Bombyk & Derek Ganzhorn & Lorenz Goette & Aldo Rustichini, 2015. "Lab Measures of Other-Regarding Preferences Can Predict Some Related on-the-Job Behavior: Evidence from a Large Scale Field Experiment," Discussion Papers 2015-21, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
  7. Chuang, Yating & Schechter, Laura, 2015. "Stability of experimental and survey measures of risk, time, and social preferences: A review and some new results," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 151-170.
  8. Peters, Jörg & Langbein, Jörg & Roberts, Gareth, 2015. "Policy evaluation, randomized controlled trials, and external validity: A systematic review," Ruhr Economic Papers 589, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
  9. Jens Rommel & Sergio Villamayor-Tomas & Malte Müller & Christine Werthmann, 2015. "Game Participation and Preservation of the Commons: An Experimental Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, Open Access Journal, vol. 7(8), pages 10021, July.

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