Abstract
Social norms provide an important explanation for why individuals behave prosocially against their immediate material self-interest in many situations. In this study, we experimentally investigate the evolution of a fairness norm in a divide-the-dollar game. Groups distribute a fixed benefit using the decision rule voting by veto. Our experimental design varies the identifiability of group members and the stability of group composition over time. We thus manipulate in how far individuals can condition their behavior on the behavior of other subjects. Our results show that interacting in a stable group with identifiable fellow group members can activate a social norm supporting distributional fairness whereas a limited ability to observe other subjects’ actions reduces the influence of fairness. Ultimately, our findings suggest that the first two rounds of a repeated interaction play a very important role for the subsequent evolution of fairness in all treatments.
JEL Classification: C92, D02, D71, D72
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Notes
- 1.
Elster (2009) develops a similar conception of norms distinguishing moral norms, quasi-moral norms and social norms which will be discussed in greater detail below.
- 2.
Proposals with higher payoffs for the voters themselves have a lower probability of being selected as group outcomes as they rank relatively low in the other players’ preference ordering. The inverse is true, as well, as more equal proposals are relatively preferred by the other voters. See Mueller (1978) and Sauermann and Beckmann (2017) for a more detailed description of the mechanism.
- 3.
For a comparison and critical assessment of Bicchieri’s and Elster’s typologies of norms see Dubreuil und Grégoire (2013).
- 4.
More specifically, subjects with conditional preferences can only condition their behavior on the behavior of the cohort from which groups are drawn in the experiment.
- 5.
The only way to sanction other group members is to build a coalition in the following periods and exclude them from the distribution of benefits.
- 6.
English translations of the instructions can be found in the supplementary materials.
- 7.
In particular, we define proposals of 4-person coalitions as proposals where one group members is assigned less than 10 points, while all other group member receive at least 20 points in the proposal.
- 8.
Proposals for 3-person-coalitions assign at least 30 points to three group members each.
- 9.
Fair behavior is defined here as assigning oneself a fair share of the endowment in period one and two, i.e. 20 points. The patterns from figure four hold up, however, when using different operationalizations of fairness, e.g. an attitudinal measurement derived from a questionnaire that was completed by the subjects after the experiment.
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Acknowledgements
This project is funded by the German Research Foundation (SA 3139/1-1). Financial support from the German Research Foundation for the Cologne Laboratory for Economic Research is also gratefully acknowledged. Furthermore, we are very grateful to Anne Schümmelfeder for excellent research assistance.
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Beckmann, P., Sauermann, J. (2022). Social Norms and Prosociality under Voting by Veto. In: Sauermann, J., Tepe, M., Debus, M. (eds) Jahrbuch für Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie. Jahrbuch für Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35878-5_6
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