Motives for Sharing in Social Networks

Abstract

What motivates people in rural villages to share? We first elicit a baseline level of sharing using a standard, anonymous dictator game. Then using variants of the dictator game that allow for either revealing the dictator's identity or allowing the dictator to choose the recipient, we attribute variation in sharing to three different motives. The first of these, directed altruism, is related to preferences, while the remaining two are incentive-related (sanctions and reciprocity). We observe high average levels of sharing in our baseline treatment, while variation across individuals depends importantly on the incentive-related motives. Finally, variation in measured reciprocity within the experiment predicts observed 'real-world' gift-giving, while other motives measured in the experiment do not predict behavior outside the experiment.JEL codes: C92, C93, D03, D64, D85, O17.$ Schechter thanks the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Delta Foundation for funding. We are grateful to Idelin Molinas and everyone at Instituto Desarrollo for their support and advice while in Paraguay. Paul Niehaus, several anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Dartmouth, Maryland, Ohio State, Princeton, UC Berkeley, Yale, BREAD at Duke, MWIEDC at UW Madison, and SITE at Stanford provided helpful comments.

Social distance and trust: Experimental evidence from a slum in Cairo

“…Evidence supporting this hypothesis has recently been provided in Andreoni and Rao (2011). We should note, however, that our dictator game results (see Table 5) are well in line with previous findings for dictator games (with role certainty) in developing countries (see e.g., Cardenas and Carpenter, 2008;Ligon and Schechter, 2012).…”

“…Other recent studies have made use of individuals' real-world social networks in experiments both in developed and in developing countries, including Leider et al (2009), D'Exelle andRiedl (2010), Goeree et al (2010), Brañas-Garza et al (2010), and Ligon and Schechter (2012). All five of these studies, however, were interested in how social distance between players affects prosocial giving in dictator games.…”

Structural Experimentation to Distinguish between Models of Risk Sharing with Frictions in Rural Paraguay

“…Decisions made in these experiments were first analyzed in Ligon and Schechter (2012). The games were held in a central location such as a church, a school, or a social hall.…”

“…In contrast, when there is hidden information, the final consumption distribution will depend on whether the identity of transfer senders is revealed, but need not depend on the identy of the recipient. This paper is a companion to Ligon and Schechter (2012) which used data from the same games to explore players' individual motivations for sharing. Both that paper and this rely on a strategy of varying whether the identity of the dictator is revealed, and whether the recipient is chosen by the dictator or chosen randomly.…”

“…Both that paper and this rely on a strategy of varying whether the identity of the dictator is revealed, and whether the recipient is chosen by the dictator or chosen randomly. Other papers that play a combination of revealed and non-revealed games, and play games with different recipients but the same givers include Ado and Kurosaki (2014), which replicates Ligon and Schechter (2012) in Jakarta; Leider et al (2009) with Harvard undergraduates; Hoel (2015) with Kenyan spouses; Ambler (2015) with transnational household members in DC and El Salvador;and Porter and Adams (2016) with British parents and their children. These experiments all tease out players' types or preferences from differences in their behavior across games.…”