Title

Revisiting the Impact of Impure Public Goods on Consumers' Prosocial Behavior: A Lab Experiment in Shanghai

Abstract

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 behavior. 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 behavior 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.

Keywords

Impure public goods; Dictator game; Multiple dictators; Mental accounting

Inquiries

Qinxin GUO
Graduate School of Economics, Kobe University

Enci WANG
School of Economics, Shanghai University, China

Yongyou NIE
School of Economics, Shanghai University, China

Junyi SHEN
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration,
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059
and
School of Economics, Shanghai University, China