Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics最新文献

Existing behavioral studies of affective partisan polarization only capture a subset of decision-making preferences and strategies. We apply an innovative experimental design, the Equality Equivalency Test (EET), to investigate a broader range of affective behavior toward partisan others. Based on data from yearly nationwide surveys between 2019 and 2022 with over 6000 observations, we find that affective polarization is expressed through strong malevolent, and to a lesser degree, benevolent deviations from rational expected-utility maximization. The rising preponderance of spitefulness towards political opponents supports negative partisanship as the dominant mechanism governing affective polarization. In addition, we find evidence of growing negative partisanship among independents, who are turning increasingly spiteful toward members of both parties. We argue that the EET should be utilized by scholars as a next-generation design innovation to deepen our understanding of affective polarization.

Leading institutions are promoting several financial literacy initiatives worldwide, yet few of them are still measuring their impact on behavior. Following the current debate on the upcoming mandatory financial education implementation in Italy, this paper provides evidence of the consequences of financial education for Gen Zers’ decision-making. Specifically, we focus on the Bank of Italy's booklets initiative to measure the impact of financial education on intertemporal choices in a middle school in the South of Italy. Through a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) and eliciting time preferences with an incentivized task, we find robust evidence that enhancing financial literacy among Gen Zers significantly improves the quality of decision-making and the consistency of intertemporal choices.

Physician motives remain a hotly debated and sensitive topic. Given the sensitive nature of this issue, direct questions may elicit either dishonest responses or no response at all. To mitigate this risk, we carried out two list experiments between November 2022 and February 2023 to examine two important physician behaviors from both the physician and patient perspectives. In these experiments, participants in the control and treatment groups were shown a list of non-sensitive statements. Additionally, each treatment group received a sensitive statement related to either demand inducement or demand enablement behavior. Participants were then asked to report only the number of statements with which they agreed. The difference in the mean number of statements agreed upon between the control and treatment groups revealed the prevalence rates of sensitive behaviors. In the physician experiment, we observed a 25 % prevalence rate (standard error (SE) = 0.127, p = 0.046) for demand inducement behavior and a 65 % rate (SE = 0.125, p < 0.001) for demand enablement behavior. In the patient experiment, compared to the control group, 52 % of participants (SE = 0.074, p < 0.001) perceived that physicians exhibit demand inducement behavior, while 39 % (SE = 0.073, p < 0.001) demonstrated behavior consistent with demand enablement. These findings indicate that physicians are more prone to offer unnecessary medical services when patients actively participate, underscoring the significant influence of patients on physician behavior.

Given that pure public goods' broader use is often limited by distance, congestion, or borders, local public goods are prevalent. The decision for the provision of these local public goods is often made by individuals who do not get to consume them. It is, therefore, not clear whether the classic free-riding problem result holds in this framework. We study the provision of a local public good where the public good contribution decisions are made by non-local intermediaries who neither contribute from their own endowment nor directly benefit from the local public good. Each intermediary decides for only one public good beneficiary. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where their incentives are either non-aligned (fixed), or aligned (variable), with those of the beneficiaries they represent. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of the compensation mechanism, significantly increases contributions to the provision of the public good.

In the workplace, incentive schemes may spill over on distributional preferences and beliefs, which underlie an employee’s willingness to cooperate. In an online experiment, we analyze how different incentive schemes and the corresponding feedback affect distributional preferences and beliefs. In six different treatments, we vary the incentive scheme (competitive vs team incentives) for a real-effort task and the feedback participants receive at the end of the real-effort task. Subsequently, we measure participants’ social value orientation (SVO), a proxy for distributional preferences, and the corresponding beliefs about other’s SVO. If no feedback is provided, participants show stronger SVOs if they are incentivized by team incentives in comparison to piece-rate remuneration. Surprisingly, this positive effect prevails under competitive incentives without feedback. With feedback about relative performance, the spillover effects differ between the incentive schemes. Under competitive incentives, participants show lower SVOs (negative spillovers), but only for low performers. Under team incentives, we find negative spillovers on preferences for high performers and positive spillovers for low performers. We find no evidence for spillovers on beliefs.

In rural settings, individual risk preferences represent one of the channels driving the shift from low-return/low-risk activities towards high-return/high-risk activities. This study takes advantage of data collected for the impact evaluation of the Child Grants Programme, an unconditional cash transfer program, and the Sustainable Poverty Reduction through Income, Nutrition and Access to Government Services (SPRINGS) project, a community development package, in rural Lesotho. The paper has two major goals. First, we investigate the effects of the programs on risk preferences measured via laboratory experiments in the field and a survey instrument. Second, we perform a mediation analysis to quantify the extent to which the programs affect risky investment decisions in real life through changes in risk preferences. Results show that the combination of programs decreases risk aversion, partially mediating the impact of the programs on risky agricultural investment decisions in real life.

To help contain the COVID-19 pandemic, many policymakers and health experts and the media have promoted responsible health behavior by using public narratives highlighting uncooperative behavior, including the lack of social distancing and resistance to various pandemic restrictions and COVID-19 vaccination. However, whether these uncooperative narratives may have detrimental consequences on trust is unclear. Hence, we conducted an online experiment to explore how the exposure to uncooperative and cooperative pandemic narratives affects people's trust in each other. We hypothesized that providing individuals with narratives depicting behaviors that violate (uncooperative narratives) and support pandemic social norms (cooperative narratives) would decrease and increase their trust in others, respectively. We showed that neither of the narratives had any effect on trust.

War causes disruption. In this study, we examine risk and time preferences of young children from Syria as they were exposed to the Syrian war. We measure children's risk and time preferences using incentivized games. To discern the effect of the war from other confounding effects, we compare children born in Syria and exposed to the war with children living in the Turkish side of the border and not exposed to the war. We find that conflict affects behavior. After controlling for demographics and cognitive ability, children exposed to the war take more risks. We do not find a significant impact of exposure to the war on time preferences or on impulsivity.