Insights into prosocial behavior
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- This dissertation proposes new behavioral motivations to explain prosocial behavior and examines how standard behavioral motivations often have more nuanced policy implications in the realm of prosocial behavior. Each chapter details the results from testing these motivations in laboratory experiments. The first chapter investigates the interaction between monetary incentives and volunteer reputations via a laboratory study entitled Incentives for Prosocial Behavior: The Role of Reputations. This study is motivated by the possibility that monetary incentives may introduce a "greedy" signal that crowds out the motivation to volunteer. As the empirical evidence on such crowd-out is mixed, this study proposes a potential explanation: the strength of the greedy signal depends on the reputations of volunteers. In particular, this study confirms that crowd out in response to monetary incentives is much less likely among those with public, as opposed to private, reputations. In joint work with Stephen Terry, the second chapter explores the role of reference points in charitable giving via a laboratory study entitled Wage Elasticities in Working and Volunteering: The Role of Reference Points in a Laboratory Study. This study demonstrates how targeting behavior, in the presence of expectations-based reference points, induces negative volunteer effort responses to high volunteer wages or productivity levels. This study thus suggests that charities should carefully consider the potentially counterproductive nature of reference points or "goals" for volunteer effort. The third chapter considers the role of risk in charitable giving via a laboratory study entitled Excusing Selfishness in Charity Giving: The Role of Risk. In particular, iv the study documents self-serving responses to risk in charitable giving, as participants appear to use even small risk of their donations having less impact as an excuse not to donate. In exploiting a within-subject experimental design, this study also provides evidence for an individual level of consistency in self-serving tendencies. This study concludes with several potential policy implications. For instance, charities may increase their donations by targeting past donors for risky projects and new donors, who are potentially more susceptible to excuses, for non-risky projects.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Exley, Christine |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics. |
| Primary advisor | Bernheim, B. Douglas |
| Primary advisor | Niederle, Muriel |
| Thesis advisor | Bernheim, B. Douglas |
| Thesis advisor | Niederle, Muriel |
| Thesis advisor | Roth, Alvin E, 1951- |
| Thesis advisor | Sprenger, Charles |
| Advisor | Roth, Alvin E, 1951- |
| Advisor | Sprenger, Charles |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Christine Exley. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Christine Linman Exley
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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