Paying it forward: an experimental study on social connections and indirect reciprocity
This paper studies how in-group social connections affect outsiders’ pro-social behavior towards group members. We employ an indirect investment game, in which a recipient of a good deed has to return to a beneficiary, instead of the original donor. We introduce the naturally-occurring social connec...
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Published in | Review of economic design Vol. 27; no. 2; pp. 387 - 417 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Berlin/Heidelberg
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
01.06.2023
Springer Nature B.V |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | This paper studies how in-group social connections affect outsiders’ pro-social behavior towards group members. We employ an indirect investment game, in which a recipient of a good deed has to return to a beneficiary, instead of the original donor. We introduce the naturally-occurring social connections between the donor and the beneficiary, and show that such connections increase the recipients’ transfer to a beneficiary by 42% when the donor’s transfer is above average. The spillover does not function through the signaling of the donor’s expectations, and altruism with an endogenous reference group explains our results well. |
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ISSN: | 1434-4742 1434-4750 |
DOI: | 10.1007/s10058-022-00298-3 |