Social Norms and Market Behavior – Evidence From a Large Population Sample

Abstract

We test the importance of social norms for market interactions associated with negative real-world externalities in a large-scale experiment with a heterogeneous population sample from Germany. The majority of experimental participants refuses to trade, thus behaving in a moral way. Our data suggest the importance of norm conformity for the decision to trade as a significant share of buyers and sellers condition market entry on the decisions of others. Moreover, a majority of observers is willing to incur personal costs to sanction trading. Moral behavior is significantly linked to demographic characteristics and stated preferences and attitudes of the participants.

Do Preferences for Urban Amenities Really Differ by Skill?

“…Due to the good data quality, the panel has been used for several studies in the social sciences and economics (e.g Neuner and Wratil, 2020;Wegwarth et al, 2020;Riehm et al, 2020)…”