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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2018‒02‒26
twelve papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Antoci, Angelo (University of Sassari); Bonelli, Laura (Sapienza University of Rome); Paglieri, Fabio (Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology); Reggiani, Tommaso G. (Masaryk University); Sabatini, Fabio (Sapienza University of Rome) |
| Abstract: | Social media have been credited with the potential of reinvigorating trust by offering new opportunities for social and political participation. This view has been recently challenged by the rising phenomenon of online incivility, which has made the environment of social networking sites hostile to many users. We conduct a novel experiment in a Facebook setting to study how the effect of social media on trust varies depending on the civility or incivility of online interaction. We find that participants exposed to civil Facebook interaction are significantly more trusting. In contrast, when the use of Facebook is accompanied by the experience of online incivility, no significant changes occur in users' behavior. These results are robust to alternative configurations of the treatments. |
| Keywords: | social media, Facebook, online incivility, trust, social networks, cooperation, trust game |
| JEL: | C91 D9 D91 Z1 |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp11290&r=soc |
| By: | Levy, Gilat; Razin, Ronny |
| Abstract: | We analyze the dynamic short and long-run effects of immigration waves on attitudes towards immigrants and social cohesion. We consider a model in which both the home society and the immigrants have the same levels of cultural capacity for cooperation and mutual trust, but individuals in the home society have different degrees of prejudice about the culture of the immigrants. Prejudice is modelled as the beliefs of individuals in the home society about the immigrants' capacity for cooperation. We analyze social interactions in the presence of prejudice when individuals in the home society can segregate away from immigrants. We show that in societies with high levels of prejudice, segregation, by providing information about prejudice, can enhance cooperation in the short-term. However, when individuals learn and update their beliefs based on their experiences, segregation induces polarisation. Moreover, when individuals also socialise and exchange information in segregated communities, echo-chamber effects arise and imply that segregation reduces welfare and trust in society. |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:12630&r=soc |
| By: | Moritz Bosbach (Università di Napoli Federico II); Ornella Wanda Maietta (Università di Napoli Federico II and CSEF) |
| Abstract: | This study aims to ascertain whether the implicit price paid for Fair Trade coffee in regular supermarkets is influenced by the stock of social capital in the territory where consumers live. A hedonic regression set-up is adopted, based on Italian scanner data taken at NUTS3 level. Regressors include attributes described on the label, which contain separate certifications for Fair Trade and organic/eco-label status, plus various indicators of social capital and their interactions with the Fair Trade and organic/eco-label attributes. The consumers’ implicit price paid for the Fair Trade attribute is significantly and positively affected by a social capital proxy, which is the percentage of co-op members over total employment. |
| Keywords: | ethical consumption; hedonic regression; scanner data |
| JEL: | C50 D12 L66 Z13 |
| Date: | 2018–02–17 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sef:csefwp:492&r=soc |
| By: | Rohan Dutta; David K Levine; Salvatore Modica |
| Date: | 2018–02–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cla:levarc:786969000000001449&r=soc |
| By: | Magdalena Bennett; Peter Leopold S. Bergman |
| Abstract: | Truancy correlates with many risky behaviors and adverse outcomes. We use detailed administrative data on by-class absences to construct social networks based on students who miss class together. We simulate these networks and use permutation tests to show that certain students systematically coordinate their absences. Leveraging a parent-information intervention on student absences, we find spillover effects from treated students onto peers in their network. We show that an optimal-targeting algorithm that incorporates machine-learning techniques to identify heterogeneous effects, as well as the direct effects and spillover effects, could further improve the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of the intervention subject to a budget constraint. |
| Keywords: | social networks, peer effects, education |
| JEL: | D85 I20 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6848&r=soc |
| By: | Michalis Drouvelis; Benjamin Marx |
| Abstract: | Group compensation and public announcement of performance are two common aspects of working with other people. We randomly assign these aspects to real-effort tasks. Following task completion and payment, subjects are given an unexpected opportunity to donate to a local charity. Group compensation and public announcement of performance have little effect on work performance but striking spillover effects on subsequent donations. Public announcement of performance doubles the amount donated to charity, and group compensation significantly increases the share donating. The results suggest that interpersonal interactions in the workplace environment may have important spillover effects on prosocial behavior outside of work. |
| Keywords: | prosocial, spillover, charitable, group, experiment |
| JEL: | D01 D64 A13 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_6849&r=soc |
| By: | Alger, Ingela; Lehmann, Laurent; Weibull, Jörgen W. |
| Abstract: | Humans have evolved in populations structured in groups that extended beyond the nuclear family. Individuals interacted with each other within these groups and there was limited migration and sometimes conáicts between these groups. Suppose that during this evolution, individuals transmitted their behaviors or preferences to their (genetic or cultural) o§spring, and that material outcomes resulting from the interaction determined which parents were more successful than others in producing (genetic or cultural) o§spring. Should one then expect pure material self-interest to prevail? Some degree of altruism, spite, inequity aversion or morality? By building on established models in population biology we analyze the role that di§erent aspects of population structureó such as group size, migration rates, probability of group conáicts, cultural loyalty towards parentsó play in shaping behaviors and preferences which, once established, cannot be displaced by any other preference. In particular, we establish that uninvadable preferences under limited migration between groups will consist of a materially self-interested, a moral, and an other-regarding component, and we show how the strength of each component depends on population structure. |
| Keywords: | Strategic interactions; Preference evolution; Evolution by natural selection; Cultural transmission; Pro-sociality; Altruism; Morality; Spite |
| JEL: | A12 A13 B52 C73 D01 D63 D64 D91 |
| Date: | 2018–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:32436&r=soc |
| By: | Bloch, Francis (Université Paris 1 and Paris School of Economics); Dutta, Bhaskar (University of Warwick and Ashoka University); Manea, Mihai (Stanford University) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the formation of partnerships in social networks. Players need favors at random times and ask their neighbors in the network to form exclusive long-term partnerships that guarantee reciprocal favor exchange. Refusing to provide a favor results in the automatic removal of the underlying link. When favors are costly, players agree to provide the first favor in a partnership only if they otherwise face the risk of eventual solitude. In equilibrium, the players essential for realizing every maximum matching can avoid this risk and enjoy higher payoffs than inessential players. Although the search for partners is decentralized and reflects local incentives, the strength of essential players drives efficient partnership formation in every network. When favors are costless, players enter partnerships at any opportunity and every maximal matching can emerge in equilibrium. In this case, efficiency is limited to special linking patterns : complete and complete bipartite networks, locally balanced bipartite networks with positive surplus, and factor-critical networks. |
| Keywords: | networks, ; partnerships, matchings ; efficiency ; decentralized markets ; favor exchange ; completely elementary networks ; locally balanced networks |
| JEL: | D85 C78 |
| Date: | 2018 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:wrk:warwec:1155&r=soc |
| By: | Carmela Milano; Sandra Rothenberger |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the impact of Facebook on cultural audience, putting the emphasis on the transmission of cultural capital in elitist circles. Our purpose is to provide important evidence concerning the digital opportunities and challenges for the use of social networks in cultural management. Based on an exploratory study, we look closely at the attitudes and reactions of cultural audience to the use of Facebook by theaters. We focus hereby on the democratization (acceptance) or the vulgarization (rejection) effects of the use of Facebook. We conclude that demographics and psychographics such as the generational effect and the personalities of the influence “the acceptance”, while environmental factors such as peer and media influence “the rejection” of the use of Facebook. The present findings help cultural institutions to have a better understanding of the profile of the actual theater audience, their needs, desires and fears. |
| Keywords: | social networks and Facebook; arts consumer research; theater management; cultural capital; vulgarization; democratization; structural equation modeling |
| JEL: | D23 D83 |
| Date: | 2018–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sol:spaper:2013/267649&r=soc |
| By: | Isabel Melguizo (Universidad Iberoamericana. Economics Department.) |
| Abstract: | We study a dynamic model of attitude formation in which individuals average others' attitudes to develop their own. We assume that individuals exhibit homophily in sociodemographic exogenous attributes, that is, the attention they pay to each other is based on whether they possess similar attributes. We also assume that individuals exhibit homophily in attitudes, at the group level. Specifically, attributes that are salient, that is, that exhibit a substantial difference in attitudes between the groups of individuals possessing and lacking them, deserve high attention. Since we allow attention to evolve over time we prove that when there is, initially, a unique most salient attribute, it deserves growing attention overtime in detriment of the remaining ones. As a result, individuals eventually interact only with others similar to them across this attribute and disagreement persists. It materializes in two groups of thinking defined according to this attribute. |
| JEL: | D83 D85 Z13 |
| Date: | 2017–03–31 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smx:wpaper:2017001&r=soc |
| By: | Felipe González; Mounu Prem |
| Abstract: | What is the value of political capital for individuals? Towards the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, military and civilian collaborators entered the business elite, controlling the largest and most important firms in the country. Using a novel panel dataset of board members in these firms, we document a work premium for those who had previously collaborated with Pinochet. After democratization, however, collaborators were removed from boards and their compensation premium disappeared, suggesting that the value of their networks depreciated.To shed light on these findings, we study military personnel before, during, and after Pinochet and find evidence of a wage premium only during the dictatorship. We interpret these results as Pinochet favoring his collaborators while he was in power. |
| Date: | 2018–01–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000092:015980&r=soc |
| By: | Ganga Shreedhar, Alessandro Tavoni, Carmen Marchiori |
| Abstract: | In an experimental study, we explore how imperfect monitoring and punishment network architectures impacts cooperation, punishment and beliefs, in a non-linear common pool resource appropriation dilemma. We find that complete networks (with perfect monitoring and punishment), are the least efficient due to higher punishment, relative to incomplete networks. In addition, high appropriators are sanctioned in all networks, but well-connected and undirected networks elicit higher anti-social punishment. Lastly, although subject’s underestimate other’s appropriation in all networks, the difference between beliefs and other’s appropriation declines with time. This decline occurs faster in complete networks, relative to incomplete but connected networks. |
| Date: | 2018–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lsg:lsgwps:wp292&r=soc |