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Revisiting the impact of impure public goods on consumers’ prosocial behavior: A lab experiment in Shanghai
Author(s) -
Guo Qinxin,
Wang Enci,
Nie Yongyou,
Shen Junyi
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
bulletin of economic research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.227
H-Index - 29
eISSN - 1467-8586
pISSN - 0307-3378
DOI - 10.1111/boer.12233
Subject(s) - dictator game , dictator , prosocial behavior , crowds , public good , selfishness , public goods game , altruism (biology) , economics , microeconomics , social psychology , public economics , psychology , political science , computer science , computer security , politics , law
In this study, we implemented a dictator game experiment to examine how the increase of the public characteristic in an impure public good affects individuals’ prosocial behaviour. A within‐subject design was used in the experiment. The dictator game was repeated six times with an impure public good introduced in four of them. We observe that the increase of the public characteristic in an impure public good partly crowds out individuals’ subsequent donations, which could be explained by a seemingly ‘mental accounting’ mental process. In addition, we also find that the selfish behaviour of individuals in dictator games with impure public goods, to some extent, has an inertia influence on their subsequent donations when the impure public good is removed.