IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uea/wcbess/09-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social desirability, approval and public good contribution

Author

Listed:
  • Daniel John Zizzo

    (University of East Anglia)

  • Piers Fleming

    (University of East Anglia)

Abstract

Behaviour in public good experiments is usually attributed partly to rational self-interest and partly to social norms and preferences. This paper examines if sensitivity to social desirability affects public good contribution and in what way. A pre-experimental measure of social desirability (SDS17) was used to match partners in a two-person public good game. Half the participants received experimenter approval based upon their investment. Contrary to predictions, the highest public good investment was by low social desirability participants in the approval condition. Social desirability was not positively related to pro-social behaviour. We consider its relation to experimental and social conformity.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniel John Zizzo & Piers Fleming, 2009. "Social desirability, approval and public good contribution," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science (CBESS) 09-11, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    • Handle: RePEc:uea:wcbess:09-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/cbess/UEA-CBESS-09-11.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alm, James & McClelland, Gary H. & Schulze, William D., 1992. "Why do people pay taxes?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 21-38, June.
    2. David Masclet & Charles Noussair & Steven Tucker & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2003. "Monetary and Nonmonetary Punishment in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 366-380, March.
    3. Hoffman, Elizabeth & McCabe, Kevin & Smith, Vernon L, 1996. "Social Distance and Other-Regarding Behavior in Dictator Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(3), pages 653-660, June.
    4. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    5. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    6. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    7. Nicholas Bardsley, 2008. "Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(2), pages 122-133, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bereket Kebede & Daniel John Zizzo, 2011. "Envy and Agricultural Innovation: An Experimental Case Study from Ethiopia," CSAE Working Paper Series 2011-06, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    2. Koch, Christian, 2013. "The Virtue Ethics Hypothesis: Is there a nexus between virtues and well-being?," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 80054, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Zizzo, Daniel John & Fleming, Piers, 2011. "Can experimental measures of sensitivity to social pressure predict public good contribution?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(3), pages 239-242, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ubeda, Paloma, 2014. "The consistency of fairness rules: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 88-100.
    2. Pamela Jakiela, 2013. "Equity vs. efficiency vs. self-interest: on the use of dictator games to measure distributional preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(2), pages 208-221, June.
    3. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    4. Agnès Festré, 2019. "On the Nature of Fair Behaviour: Further Evidence," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 193-207, December.
    5. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638, June.
    6. Dimant, Eugen, 2015. "On Peer Effects: Behavioral Contagion of (Un)Ethical Behavior and the Role of Social Identity," MPRA Paper 68732, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Emin Karagözoglu & Arno Riedl, 2010. "Information, Uncertainty, and Subjective Entitlements in Bargaining," CESifo Working Paper Series 3133, CESifo.
    8. Martin G. Kocher & Odile Poulsen & Daniel J. Zizzo, 2017. "Social preferences, accountability, and wage bargaining," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 48(3), pages 659-678, March.
    9. Klaus Abbink & David Masclet & Daniel Mirza, 2018. "Inequality and inter-group conflicts: experimental evidence," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(3), pages 387-423, March.
    10. repec:clg:wpaper:2014-43 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth & Thomas Pitz, 2010. "At the Mercy of the Prisoner Next Door. Using an Experimental Measure of Selfishness as a Criminological Tool," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2010_27, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    12. David Johnson & Sebastian Goerg & Jonathan Rogers, "undated". "Can't Touch This! Similarity And Willingness to Keep "Dirty Money"," Working Papers 2014-81, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 10 Nov 2014.
    13. Friedrich Heinemann & Martin Kocher, 2013. "Tax compliance under tax regime changes," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 20(2), pages 225-246, April.
    14. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts, 2016. "Political autonomy and independence: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(3), pages 461-496, July.
    15. Christoph Bühren & Thorben C. Kundt, 2013. "Worker or Shirker – Who Evades More Taxes? A Real Effort Experiment," MAGKS Papers on Economics 201326, Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung).
    16. Chakravarty, Sugato & Jain, Pankaj & Upson, James & Wood, Robert, 2012. "Clean Sweep: Informed Trading through Intermarket Sweep Orders," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 415-435, April.
    17. Engelmann, Dirk & Fischbacher, Urs, 2009. "Indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 399-407, November.
    18. Casal, Sandro & Mittone, Luigi, 2016. "Social esteem versus social stigma: The role of anonymity in an income reporting game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 55-66.
    19. Simon Gächter & Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2013. "Peer Effects In Pro-Social Behavior: Social Norms Or Social Preferences?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 548-573, June.
    20. Josie I. Chen & Kenju Kamei, 2018. "Disapproval aversion or inflated inequity acceptance? The impact of expressing emotions in ultimatum bargaining," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(4), pages 836-857, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:uea:wcbess:09-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Cara Liggins (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esueauk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.