[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/econwp/134.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do markets erode social responsibility?

Author

Listed:
  • Björn Bartling
  • Roberto A. Weber
  • Lan Yao
Abstract
This paper studies socially responsible behavior in markets. We develop a laboratory product market in which low-cost production creates a negative externality for third parties, but where alternative production with higher costs mitigates the externality. Our first study, conducted in Switzerland, reveals a persistent preference among many consumers and firms for avoiding negative social impact in the market, reflected both in the composition of product types and in a price premium for socially responsible products. Socially responsible behavior is generally robust to varying market settings, such as increased seller competition and limited consumer information, and it responds to costs and prices in a manner consistent with a model in which positive social impact is a utility-enhancing feature of a consumer product. In a second study, we investigate whether market social responsibility varies across societies by comparing market behavior in Switzerland and China. While subjects in Switzerland and China do not differ in their degree of social concern in non-market contexts, we find that low-cost production that creates negative externalities is significantly more prevalent in markets in China. Across both studies, consumers in markets exhibit less social concern than subjects in a comparable individual choice context, though the difference is much smaller in Switzerland.

Suggested Citation

  • Björn Bartling & Roberto A. Weber & Lan Yao, 2013. "Do markets erode social responsibility?," ECON - Working Papers 134, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Aug 2014.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:134
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/85623/7/econwp134.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoffman Elizabeth & McCabe Kevin & Shachat Keith & Smith Vernon, 1994. "Preferences, Property Rights, and Anonymity in Bargaining Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 7(3), pages 346-380, November.
    2. Gneezy, Uri & Rustichini, Aldo, 2000. "A Fine is a Price," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 1-17, January.
    3. Danz, David & Engelmann, Dirk & Kübler, Dorothea, 2022. "Do legal standards affect ethical concerns of consumers?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    4. Ernst Fehr & Georg Kirchsteiger & Arno Riedl, 1993. "Does Fairness Prevent Market Clearing? An Experimental Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 108(2), pages 437-459.
    5. Alvin E. Roth, 2007. "Repugnance as a Constraint on Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(3), pages 37-58, Summer.
    6. Andrei Shleifer, 2004. "Does Competition Destroy Ethical Behavior?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 414-418, May.
    7. repec:cup:judgdm:v:4:y:2009:i:6:p:467-474 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Joel Sobel, 2009. "Generous actors, selfish actions: markets with other-regarding preferences," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 56(1), pages 3-16, March.
    9. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    10. Christoph Engel, 2011. "Dictator games: a meta study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 583-610, November.
    11. Carl Mellström & Magnus Johannesson, 2008. "Crowding Out in Blood Donation: Was Titmuss Right?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(4), pages 845-863, June.
    12. Cappelen, Alexander W. & Sørensen, Erik Ø. & Tungodden, Bertil, 2013. "When do we lie?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 258-265.
    13. Plott, Charles R, 1983. "Externalities and Corrective Policies in Experimental Markets," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 93(369), pages 106-127, March.
    14. Timothy Besley, 2013. "What's the Good of the Market? An Essay on Michael Sandel's What Money Can't Buy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(2), pages 478-495, June.
    15. Hongbin Cai & Qiao Liu, 2009. "Competition and Corporate Tax Avoidance: Evidence from Chinese Industrial Firms," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 764-795, April.
    16. Brandts, Jordi & Riedl, Arno & van Winden, Frans, 2009. "Competitive rivalry, social disposition, and subjective well-being: An experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(11-12), pages 1158-1167, December.
    17. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter & Georg Kirchsteiger, 1997. "Reciprocity as a Contract Enforcement Device: Experimental Evidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 833-860, July.
    18. Alexander W. Cappelen & Astri Drange Hole & Erik Ø Sørensen & Bertil Tungodden, 2007. "The Pluralism of Fairness Ideals: An Experimental Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 818-827, June.
    19. Kenneth Arrow, 1970. "Political and Economic Evaluation of Social Effects and Externalities," NBER Chapters, in: The Analysis of Public Output, pages 1-30, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Julius Margolis, 1970. "The Analysis of Public Output," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number marg70-1.
    21. Frey, Bruno S & Oberholzer-Gee, Felix & Eichenberger, Reiner, 1996. "The Old Lady Visits Your Backyard: A Tale of Morals and Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(6), pages 1297-1313, December.
    22. Jason Dana & Roberto Weber & Jason Kuang, 2007. "Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 67-80, October.
    23. James Andreoni & John Miller, 2002. "Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 737-753, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nana Adrian & Ann-Kathrin Crede & Jonas Gehrlein, 2019. "Market Interaction and the Focus on Consequences in Moral Decision Making," Diskussionsschriften dp1905, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    2. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638, June.
    3. Emin Karagözoğlu & Elif Tosun, 2022. "Endogenous Game Choice and Giving Behavior in Distribution Games," Games, MDPI, vol. 13(6), pages 1-32, November.
    4. Erkut, Hande, 2022. "Social norms and preferences for generosity are domain dependent," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 121-140.
    5. Pablo Brañas-Garza, 2008. "Expected Behavior in the Dictator Game," ThE Papers 08/12, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..
    6. Samuel Bowles & Sandra Polania-Reyes, 2011. "Economic incentives and social preferences: substitutes or complements?," Department of Economics University of Siena 617, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    7. Fehr, Ernst & Falk, Armin, 2002. "Psychological foundations of incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 687-724, May.
    8. Ismael Rodriguez-Lara & Luis Moreno-Garrido, 2012. "Self-interest and fairness: self-serving choices of justice principles," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 158-175, March.
    9. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2018. "Welfare-Based Altruism," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 89, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    10. Bartling Björn & Grieder Manuel & Zehnder Christian, 2014. "Does competition justify inequality?," ECON - Working Papers 158, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Nov 2015.
    11. Vanessa Valero, 2022. "Redistribution and beliefs about the source of income inequality," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(3), pages 876-901, June.
    12. Ogawa, Kazuhito & Takemoto, Toru & Takahashi, Hiromasa & Suzuki, Akihiro, 2012. "Income earning opportunity and work performance affect donating behavior: Evidence from dictator game experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(6), pages 816-826.
    13. Robson, Matthew, 2021. "Inequality aversion, self-interest and social connectedness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 183(C), pages 744-772.
    14. Murnighan, J. Keith & Wang, Long, 2016. "The social world as an experimental game," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 80-94.
    15. Breitmoser, Yves & Vorjohann, Pauline, 2022. "Fairness-based Altruism," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 666, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    16. Cardella, Eric & Roomets, Alex, 2022. "Pay distribution preferences and productivity effects: An experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    17. Christine L. Exley & Judd B. Kessler, 2018. "Equity Concerns are Narrowly Framed," NBER Working Papers 25326, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. De Geest, Lawrence R. & Kingsley, David C., 2021. "Norm enforcement with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 403-430.
    19. Pamela Jakiela, 2013. "Equity vs. efficiency vs. self-interest: on the use of dictator games to measure distributional preferences," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(2), pages 208-221, June.
    20. Thorsten Chmura & Christoph Engel & Markus Englerth, 2013. "Selfishness As a Potential Cause of Crime. A Prison Experiment," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2013_05, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Social responsibility; markets; externalities; competition; cultural differences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D62 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Externalities
    • M14 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Business Administration - - - Corporate Culture; Diversity; Social Responsibility

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zur:econwp:134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/seizhch.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.