This paper presents the results of a survey exploring the determinants of vacinees' confidence in COVID-19 vaccines and their motivations to become vaccinated. At the threatening rise of the highly ...infectious Omicron variant, in December 2021, we interviewed people in waiting lines of vaccination centers. Our results identify risk-averse and social-distancing-compliant people as showing high confidence in the vaccine, which motivates them to receive it for reasons of protecting themselves and others. By contrast, policy incentives, such as "3G/2G" restrictions, motivate risk-tolerant people who opted for vaccination to get access to public areas. Trusting people who regularly vote are little afraid of vaccines' side effects. Our findings offer insights for policymakers in societies and firms that help to tailor policies promoting vaccination based on people's economic preferences.
•We test whether preferences and social responsibility predict compliance.•Results show that risk tolerance negatively affects compliance to social distancing.•Patience increases citizens’ ...willingness to stay home and avoid crowds.•Pre-crisis social responsible behavior is positively related with social compliance.•The findings help to identify target groups and regions, which are at risk.
We analyze in a survey study whether economic preferences and pre-crisis social responsibility predict social compliance to the policy regulations. Results show that economic preferences are closely related to compliance with policies fighting the crisis. Risk tolerance negatively affects citizens’ avoidance of crowds, whereas patience helps to do so and to stay home. Present-biased subjects engage in panic buying. Risk tolerance is negatively related with the fear of COVID-19 and trust positively resonates with positive media perception. Pre-crisis social responsible behavior related to fare evasion, turnout, support of vaccination is also positively related with social compliance. Our findings offer insights, which may help policy-makers and organizations to identify risk groups and regions for the allocation of scarce medical or surveillance resources, such as vaccines, masks, and law enforcement.
This paper experimentally studies the disposition effects of teams and individuals. The disposition effect describes the phenomenon that investors are reluctant to realize losses, whereas winners are ...sold too early. Our experiments compare the investments of two-person teams to a setting where investors trade alone. We find that subjects investing jointly exhibit more pronounced disposition effects than individuals. A closer look reveals that investor teams hardly realize losses and predominately sell winners. The data suggest that decision-dependent emotions may explain the differences. That is, teams reporting high levels of regret exhibit significantly higher disposition effects than individuals.
•We analyze the influence of social preferences on honest behavior in a die-roll game.•Subjects’ social value orientation (SVO) explains different levels of honest behavior.•Men are significantly ...less honest than women.•Women have on average higher SVO angles than men.•SVO mediates the gender difference in honesty in our setting.
This paper experimentally analyzes the role of individual social value orientation (SVO) on honest behavior. We focus on a situation where dishonest behavior pays off at somebody else’s cost. In which case, distributional preferences might matter for the willingness to act honestly. To examine this link we conduct a laboratory experiment where we first elicit SVO to measure distributional preferences. Afterwards, we implement a die rolling game to elicit dishonest behavior at an individual level. We detect a positive correlation between subjects’ SVO angle and honest behavior. Furthermore, the data confirm common gender differences, i.e., women are significantly more honest than men. Additionally, we find that, on average, women have higher SVO angles than men. A mediation analysis reveals that SVO explains the gender effect.
This paper analyzes in a within-subjects experiment time preferences when people decide for themselves and on behalf of others. The data show that subjects become more impatient when making ...decisions, which affect the payoff of others. Regression analyses reveal a positive correlation between altruistic behavior and impatience in decisions for others.
•Experimental analysis of time preferences in decisions for others.•Subjects behave more impatient when their decisions affect others’ payoffs.•Altruistic behavior correlates with impatience for others.
This paper analyzes seasonal effects and their potential drivers in charitable giving. We conduct two studies to analyze whether donations to the German Red Cross differ between the Christmas season ...and summer. In study 1 we find that in the pre-Christmas shopping season prosocial subjects almost donate 50% less compared to prosocials in summer. In study 2 we replicate the low donations in the Christmas season. In an extensive questionnaire we control for several causes of this effect. The data suggest that the higher prosocials' self-reported stress level, the lower the donations. The higher their relative savings, the lower the giving. Our questionnaire rules out that "donation fatigue" matters. That is, donations do not depend on the number of charitable campaigns subjects are confronted with and their engagement in these activities during Christmas season outside the lab.
Gender-wage gaps are an important phenomenon on labor markets. They can possibly be caused by the institutional framework. This question is addressed in this paper. When only joint output can be ...observed in team production, individuals may submit self-reports of their contribution to a principal. In a multi-employee gift exchange experiment, we study how men and women behave differently with and without such self-reports. We cannot reject that self-reports left the overall efficiency of the gift exchange interaction unchanged, but detect notable gender differences. Women reported similar effort levels as men, but contributed significantly less. The difference in contributions led to a significant gender gap in wages, depending on gender group composition. These effects were only present when participants did not know each other's gender, however. When instead gender was observable, the behavior of men and women converged. The results suggest that parts of wage gaps may be related to different behavior within incomplete contract and imperfect information environments, depending on details of the informational context.
In this paper, we investigate how payment procedures that are deemed unfair can spur unethical behavior towards innocent coworkers in a real-effort experiment. In our Discrimination treatment, a ...highly unfair payment procedure with wage differentials, half the workforce is randomly selected and paid by relative performance whereas the remaining receives no payment. A joy-of-destruction game measures unethical behavior subsequently. Non-earners in Discrimination destroy significantly more than in the non-discriminatory control treatments. In Discrimination, unethical behavior is generally high for all non-earners, independent of individual inequality aversion and relative performance beliefs. In the control treatments, inequality aversion is the main driver of destructive behavior. (JEL C91, D03, J33, J70, M52)
This paper studies temporal-distance effects on individual and social risks, testing Construal Level Theory. We elicit WTPs for risky and ambiguous lotteries and vary the timing (immediately vs. in ...two weeks) when the uncertainty is resolved. Subjects have lower WTPs for longshots than for safer lotteries. Under ambiguity, this gap decreases with temporal distance. Subjects are ambiguity averse, which becomes less pronounced when low-probability lotteries are processed in the future. In a trust game, we study temporal-distance effects on social risks. Time distance lowers trust as trustors correctly anticipate that reciprocity is lower when trustees decide in the future.
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