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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2024‒02‒05
eight papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Michael E. Darden; Mario Macis |
| Abstract: | We present results from a nationally representative survey of American adults, guided by a simple theoretical model expressing health care-seeking behavior as a function of economic and behavioral fundamentals and highlighting the role of trust. We report several findings. First, we document a strong association between higher levels of trust in the health care system and reported care-seeking behavior, both retrospective and anticipated. This relationship holds across several care scenarios, from routine check-ups to vaccinations. Second, the impact of trust on health care utilization is similar in magnitude to that of factors such as income and education, long recognized as crucial in the existing literature. Third, the relationship between trust and care-seeking behavior appears to be mediated by key mechanisms from our theoretical framework, notably individuals’ beliefs about the system's effectiveness in managing their health and their personal disutility tied to medical visits. Fourth, we ask respondents about trust in specific health care system sectors, and we find important heterogeneity in the associations between trust and care-seeking behavior, notably between trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the likelihood to receive flu and COVID-19 vaccinations. Finally, we find no differential relationship between trust and care-seeking for Black respondents, but we find important differences by age and political affiliation. Our findings hold significant implications for policy, particularly given that trust in medical and, more broadly, scientific expertise is increasingly difficult to establish. |
| JEL: | I11 I12 I14 I18 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32028&r=soc |
| By: | Roland Bénabou (Princeton University, NBER, CEPR, IZA, BREAD, and briq); Armin Falk (University of Bonn); Luca Henkel (University of Chicago and University of CEMA, CESifo, JILAEE) |
| Abstract: | Choosing what is morally right can be based on the consequences (ends) resulting from the decision – the Consequentialist view – or on the conformity of the means involved with some overarching notion of duty – the Deontological view. Using a series of experiments, we investigate the overall prevalence and the consistency of consequentialist and deontological decision-making, when these two moral principles come into conflict. Our design includes a real-stakes version of the classical trolley dilemma, four novel games that induce ends-versus-means tradeoffs, and a rule-following task. These six main games are supplemented with six classical self-versus-other choice tasks, allowing us to relate consequential/deontological behavior to standard measures of prosociality. Across the six main games, we find a sizeable prevalence (20 to 44%) of non-consequentialist choices by subjects, but no evidence of stable individual preference types across situations. In particular, trolley behavior predicts no other ends-versus-means choices. Instead, which moral principle prevails appears to be context-dependent. In contrast, we find a substantial level of consistency across self-versus-other decisions, but individuals’ degree of prosociality is unrelated to how they choose in ends-versus-means tradeoffs. |
| Keywords: | morality, deontological, consequentialist, Kantian, ends-versus-means, trolley dilemma, prosocial, altruism, social preferences |
| JEL: | C91 D01 D64 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:275&r=soc |
| By: | Zvonimir BaÅ¡ić (Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow, UK); Parampreet C. Bindra (University of Innsbruck); Daniela Glätzle-Rützler (University of Innsbruck, Austria); Angelo Romano (Leiden University, Netherlands); Matthias Sutter (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, University of Cologne, Germany, University of Innsbruck, Austria, IZA Bonn, Germany, and CESifo Munich); Claudia Zoller (Management Center Innsbruck) |
| Abstract: | We study the developmental roots of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine pre-registered hypotheses about which of three fundamental pillars of human cooperation – direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and third-party punishment – emerges earliest and is more effective as a means to increase cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game. We find that already children aged 3 act in a conditionally cooperative way. Yet, direct and indirect reciprocity do not increase overall cooperation rates beyond a control condition. Compared to the latter, punishment more than doubles cooperation rates, making it the most effective mechanism to promote cooperation. We also find that children’s cognitive skills and parents’ socioeconomic background influence cooperation. We complement our experimental findings with a meta-analysis of studies on cooperation among adults and older children, confirming that punishment outperforms direct and indirect reciprocity. |
| Keywords: | Cooperation, reciprocity, third-party punishment, children, parents, prisoner’s dilemma game, experiment, meta-analysis |
| JEL: | C91 C93 D01 D91 H41 |
| Date: | 2024–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2024_02&r=soc |
| By: | Schaffer, Lena Maria (University of Luzern); Magyar, Zsuzsanna |
| Abstract: | We examine how exposure to energy transition and climate policy vulnerability influence popular support for more ambitious climate policy. Moreover, we explore whether this relationship depends on a person's generalized and political trust. Comparing data from surveys in Germany and Switzerland, our findings reveal that perceived exposure to energy transition positively influences climate policy support, while individual climate policy vulnerability decreases it. For individuals with higher levels of trust, exposure helps enhance the positive effect (subjective exposure) or dampen the negative effect (policy vulnerability). These results underscore the importance of incorporating trust and subjective perceptions into climate policy frameworks. |
| Date: | 2023–12–30 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:8cquz&r=soc |
| By: | De Petris, Caterina; Drechsler, Martin |
| Abstract: | Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are an incentive-based policy instrument encouraging landowners to adopt conservation practices that enhance ecosystem services in exchange for a compensation payment. PES schemes vary considerably in their design, yielding important implications for their conservation outcome and their cost-effectiveness. Given that a landowner’s probability of re-enrolling in a PES scheme is significantly influenced by social norms, this article explores whether the cost-effectiveness of PES schemes could be increased by leveraging on social norms. In particular, we explore whether designing dynamic PES schemes in which a homogenous PES payment is reduced in subsequent contracts would be more cost-effective than static schemes under the assumption that some landowners will enrol or re-enrol in the scheme encouraged by the behaviours of neighbouring landowners. We analyse whether, by initially setting a high payment so as to build a partially conserved landscape, it would be possible to leverage on social norms and reduce the PES payment without losing much conservation engagement. For this purpose, a conceptual agent-based simulation model entailing social norms and bounded rationality as well as other-regarding preferences has been developed. |
| Keywords: | Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES); agri-environment schemes (AES); social norms; bounded rationality; ecological-economic modelling; agent-based modelling (ABM) |
| JEL: | C6 Q57 Q58 |
| Date: | 2023–12–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:119534&r=soc |
| By: | Monzani, Lucas; Bibic, Kira; Haslam, S. Alexander; Kerschreiter, Rudolf; Wilson-Lemoine, Jérémy E.; Steffens, Niklas K.; Akfirat, Serap Arslan; Ballada, Christine Joy A.; Bazarov, Tahir; Jamir Benzon R. Aruta, John; Avanzi, Lorenzo; Bunjak, Aldijana; Černe, Matej; Edelmann, Charlotte M.; Epitropaki, Olga; Fransen, Katrien; García-Ael, Cristina; Giessner, Steffen; Gleibs, Ilka H.; Godlewska-Werner, Dorota; Kark, Ronit; Ramat-Gan, Israel; Laguia Gonzalez, Ana; Lam, Hodar; Lupina-Wegener, Anna; Markovits, Yannis; Maskor, Mazlan; Molero Alonso, Fernando Jorge; Antonio Moriano Leon, Juan; Neves, Pedro; Pauknerová, Daniela; Retowski, Sylwiusz; Roland-Lévy, Christine; Samekin, Adil; Sekiguchi, Tomoki; Story, Joana; Stouten, Jeroen; Sultanova, Lilia; Tatachari, Srinivasan; van Bunderen, Lisanne; Van Dijk, Dina; Wong, Sut I; van Dick, Rolf |
| Abstract: | Identity leadership involves leaders creating and promoting a sense of shared group membership (a sense of 'we' and 'us') among followers. The present research report tests this claim by drawing on data from 26 countries that are part of the Global Identity Leadership Development (GILD) project to examine the relationship between political leaders' identity leadership and civic citizenship behavior (N = 6, 787). It also examines the contribution of trust and economic inequality to this relationship. Political leaders' identity leadership (PLIL) was positively associated with respondents' people-oriented civic citizenship behaviors (CCB-P) in 20 of 26 countries and civic citizenship behaviors aimed at one's country (CCB-C) in 23 of 26 countries. Mediational analyses also confirmed the indirect effects of PLIL via trust in fellow citizens on both CCB-P (in 25 out of the 26 countries) and CCB-C (in all 26 countries). Economic inequality moderated these effects such that the main and indirect effects of trust in one's fellow citizens on CCB-C were stronger in countries with higher economic inequality. This interaction effect was not observed for CCB-P. The study highlights the importance of identity leadership and trust in fellow citizens in promoting civic citizenship behavior, especially in the context of economic inequality. |
| Keywords: | social identity; identity leadership; economic inequality; trust; civic citizenship behavior |
| JEL: | D63 |
| Date: | 2024–01–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:120374&r=soc |
| By: | Qin, Botao; Shogren, Jason |
| Abstract: | Herein, we examine the optimal contract design when social norms have a disutility on landowners' participation in payment for environmental services programs. We find that a regulator can use less powerful monetary incentives to induce landowners to retire more land when the regulator appeals to social norms. Next, we consider the case when landowners determine the social norms of land retirement endogenously given that they live in small communities. We find that when there is asymmetric information about personal norms, the high-personal-norm type will retire more than the optimal amount of land and the low-personal-norm type will retire less than the optimal amount of land. We also explore when there is asymmetric information about landowners' sensitivities to social norms. We find that the optimal contract design depends on the relative magnitude of landowners' personal norms and the expected social norms. The results differ from the standard mechanism design literature. |
| Keywords: | Social norms, Mechanism design, Payment for environmental services, Asymmetric information |
| JEL: | D82 D91 Q57 |
| Date: | 2023–05–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:112878&r=soc |
| By: | Bauer, Kevin; Chen, Yan; Hett, Florian; Kosfeld, Michael |
| Abstract: | How does group identity affect belief formation? To address this question, we conduct a series of online experiments with a representative sample of individuals in the US. Using the setting of the 2020 US presidential election, we find evidence of intergroup preference across three distinct components of the belief formation cycle: a biased prior belief, avoidance of outgroup information sources, and a belief-updating process that places greater (less) weight on prior (new) information. We further find that an intervention reducing the salience of information sources decreases outgroup information avoidance by 50%. In a social learning context in wave 2, we find participants place 33% more weight on ingroup than outgroup guesses. Through two waves of interventions, we identify source utility as the mechanism driving group effects in belief formation. Our analyses indicate that our observed effects are driven by groupy participants who exhibit stable and consistent intergroup preferences in both allocation decisions and belief formation across all three waves. These results suggest that policymakers could reduce the salience of group and partisan identity associated with a policy to decrease outgroup information avoidance and increase policy uptake. |
| Keywords: | group identity, information demand, information processing, political polarization |
| JEL: | D47 C78 C92 D82 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:safewp:280966&r=soc |