Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Papers in Economics,
University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

No 531: Social preferences are stable over long periods of time

Fredrik Carlsson (), Olof Johansson-Stenman () and Khanh Nam Pham ()
Additional contact information
Fredrik Carlsson: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG, Sweden
Olof Johansson-Stenman: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG, Sweden
Khanh Nam Pham: Department of Economics, School of Business, Economics and Law, Göteborg University, Postal: P.O. Box 640, SE 40530 GÖTEBORG, Sweden

Abstract: We measure people’s prosocial behavior, in terms of voluntary money and labor time contributions to an archetypical public good, a bridge, and in terms of voluntary money contributions in a public good game, using the same non-student sample in rural Vietnam at four different points in time from 2005 to 2011. Two of the experiments are natural experiment, one is a field experiment and one is a public good experiment. Since the experiments were conducted far apart in time, the potentially confounding effects of moral licensing and moral cleansing are presumably small, if existing at all. Despite large contextual variations, we find a strong positive and statistically significant correlation between voluntary contributions in these experiments, whether correcting for other covariates or not. This suggests that pro-social preferences are fairly stable over long periods of time and contexts.

Keywords: natural field experiment; preference stability; social preferences; moral licensing; moral cleansing.

JEL-codes: C93; H41

24 pages, April 30, 2012

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