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Social punishment for breaching restrictions during the COVID‐19 pandemic
Author(s) -
Takahashi Ryo,
Tanaka Kenta
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/ecin.13020
Subject(s) - covid-19 , norm (philosophy) , punishment (psychology) , pandemic , economics , closure (psychology) , government (linguistics) , law and economics , business , political science , microeconomics , law , social psychology , psychology , outbreak , medicine , linguistics , philosophy , disease , pathology , virology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
Abstract In response to the novel coronavirus outbreak, the Japanese government requested the temporary closure of businesses. Consequently, complying with restrictions came to be recognized as the social norm, and stores that continued with business as usual were seen as norm‐breakers. This study empirically investigates costly punishment behavior for stores' violation of restrictions and how this behavior changes when a decision‐maker receives information pertaining to contrasting norms, implicitly requiring the opposite response. By implementing joy‐of‐destruction minigames, we found that costly punishment behavior for norm‐breakers was significantly stimulated (by approximately 11%) but not increased when additional information was provided.