scholarly journals The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Serra-Garcia ◽  
Nora Szech
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Demand Curve ◽  
Behavioral Model ◽  
Monetary Incentives ◽  
Keen Interest ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
The Face

Ignorance enables individuals to act immorally. This is well known in policy circles, in which there is keen interest in lowering moral ignorance. In this paper, we study how the demand for moral ignorance responds to monetary incentives and how the demand curve for ignorance reacts to social norm messages. We propose a simple behavioral model in which individuals suffer moral costs when behaving selfishly in the face of moral information. In several experiments, we find that moral ignorance decreases by more than 30 percentage points with small monetary incentives, but we find no significant change with social norm messages, and we document strong persistence of ignorance across moral contexts. Our findings indicate that rather simple messaging interventions may have limited effects on ignorance. In contrast, changes in incentives could be highly effective. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

scholarly journals Prioritising surgical cases deferred by the COVID-19 pandemic: an ethics-inspired algorithmic framework for health leaders

BMJ Leader ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. leader-2020-000343
Author(s):  
Amit Jain ◽  
Tinglong Dai ◽  
Christopher G Myers ◽  
Punya Jain ◽  
Shruti Aggarwal
Keyword(s):  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Health System ◽  
System Capacity ◽  
Surgical Case ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Algorithmic Framework ◽  
Limited Health ◽  
Healthcare Leaders

Elective surgical suspension during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a sizeable surgical case backlog throughout the world. As we ramp back up, how do we decide which cases take priority? Potential future waves (or a future pandemic) may lead to additional surgical shutdown and subsequent reopening. Deciding which cases to prioritise in the face of limited health system capacity has emerged as a new challenge for healthcare leaders. Here we present an ethically grounded and operationally efficient surgical prioritisation framework for healthcare leaders and practitioners, drawing insights from decision analysis and organisational sciences.

Talking Behind Your Back: Communication and Team Cooperation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Klaus Abbink ◽  
Lu Dong ◽  
Lingbo Huang
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Team Communication ◽  
Team Cooperation ◽  
Profit Allocation ◽  
Asymmetric Communication ◽  
Present Experimental Evidence

Communication is one of the most effective devices in promoting team cooperation. However, asymmetric communication sometimes breeds collusion and hurts team efficiency. Here, we present experimental evidence showing that excluding one member from team communication hurts team cooperation; the communicating partners collude in profit allocation against the excluded member, and the latter reacts by exerting less effort. Allowing the partners to reach out to the excluded member partially restores cooperation and fairness in profit allocation, but it does not stop the partners from talking behind that member’s back even when they could have talked publicly. The partners sometimes game the system by tricking the excluded member into contributing but then grabbing all profits for themselves. This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

scholarly journals How to Survey Citizens’ Compliance with COVID-19 Public Health Measures: Evidence from Three Survey Experiments

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-François Daoust ◽  
Richard Nadeau ◽  
Ruth Dassonneville ◽  
Erick Lachapelle ◽  
Éric Bélanger ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Choice Making ◽  
Health Measures ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Face Saving ◽  
Answer Choice

Abstract The extent to which citizens comply with newly enacted public health measures such as social distancing or lockdowns strongly affects the propagation of the virus and the number of deaths from COVID-19. It is however very difficult to identify non-compliance through survey research because claiming to follow the rules is socially desirable. Using three survey experiments, we examine the efficacy of different ‘face-saving’ questions that aim to reduce social desirability in the measurement of compliance with public health measures. Our treatments soften the social norm of compliance by way of a short preamble in combination with a guilty-free answer choice making it easier for respondents to admit non-compliance. We find that self-reported non-compliance increases by up to +11 percentage points when making use of a face-saving question. Considering the current context and the importance of measuring non-compliance, we argue that researchers around the world should adopt our most efficient face-saving question.

scholarly journals The Attraction and Compromise Effects in Bargaining: Experimental Evidence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Galeotti ◽  
Maria Montero ◽  
Anders Poulsen
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Attraction Effect ◽  
Compromise Effect

We experimentally investigate, in an unstructured bargaining environment with commonly known money payoffs, the attraction effect and compromise effect (AE and CE) in bargaining, namely, a tendency for bargainers to agree to an intermediate option (CE) or to an option that dominates another option (AE). We conjecture that the relevance of the AE and CE in bargaining is constrained by how focal the feasible agreements’ payoffs are. We indeed observe that there are significant AEs and CEs, but these effects are mediated by the efficiency and equality properties of the feasible agreements. Due to the allure of equality, the effects are harder to observe when an equal earnings contract is available. Decoys are more effective in shifting agreements from a very unequal contract to a less unequal one rather than the reverse. This paper was accepted by Yuval Rottenstreich, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

scholarly journals Study on the Correlation between Social Norm and Pro-Environmental Behavior of Employees in Health Care Industry – Viewpoint of Personality Trait

2020 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 187-198
Author(s):  
Pai-Chin HUANG ◽  
Kuo-Sung LIN
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Environmental Behavior ◽  
Health Care Industry ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Behavioral Model ◽  
Care Industry ◽  
New City ◽  
And Behavior

Global warming is the serious warning of the earth environment, and environmental problems resulted from greenhouse effect are the weapon of mass destruction. Accordingly, pro-environmental behavior related issues are emphasized. Nevertheless, most past research on environmental protection issues were analyzed from macro organizational perspectives, but few from micro individual perspectives. However, individuals were the basis of any environmental protection executors. Group and organizational environmental policy and behavioral model could be inferred after clearly understanding individual environmental motivation and behavior. As a result, the analysis of the process of individual presenting pro-environmental behavior is worth discussion. Employees in health care industry in Fuzhou Binhai New City, Fujian, as the research samples, are distributed 400 copies of questionnaire. After removing invalid and incomplete copies, 278 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 70%. Suggestions are further proposed, according to the results, expecting to help relevant entities make good environmental norm and shape correct social norm and environmental behavior for the public.

scholarly journals Optimal Management of Evolving Hierarchies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Leth Hougaard ◽  
Juan D. Moreno-Ternero ◽  
Lars Peter Østerdal
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Economics ◽  
Decision Analysis ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Joint Venture ◽  
Social Mobilization ◽  
Optimal Management ◽  
Allocation Scheme ◽  
Multilevel Marketing ◽  
Potential Applications

We study the optimal management of evolving hierarchies of revenue-generating agents. The initiator invests into expanding the hierarchy by adding another agent, who will bring revenues to the joint venture and who will invest herself into expanding the hierarchy further, and so on. The higher the investments (which are private information), the higher the probability of expanding the hierarchy. An allocation scheme specifies how revenues are distributed, as the hierarchy evolves. We obtain schemes that are socially optimal and initiator-optimal, respectively. Our results have potential applications for blockchain, cryptocurrencies, social mobilization, and multilevel marketing. This paper was accepted by Manel Baucells, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Analysis of Chinese People’s Perception of Radiation and Nuclear Power With Insights Into Behavioral Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsingtzu Wu ◽  
Da-Wei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Nuclear Power ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Behavioral Science ◽  
System Model ◽  
Monetary Incentives ◽  
Outreach Programs ◽  
People’S Perception ◽  
The Face

Abstract Nuclear power has been at the center of public debate for decades, and social acceptance is critical to its development. A questionnaire survey was conducted to gain a better understanding of Chinese citizens’ perception of nuclear power and radiation from the perspectives of behavioral science. In this study the respondents’ cognitive biases regarding nuclear power and radiation were explained with a dual-system model. Effectiveness of outreach programs about nuclear power was recognized. In addition, this study suggests the prejudice against radiation remained strong in the face of statements of fact and monetary incentives. Finally, some suggestions regarding improvement in outreach programs and public relations policy are provided.

scholarly journals Optimal Contracting with Endogenous Social Norms

2008 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 1459-1475 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Fischer ◽  
Steven Huddart
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Adverse Selection ◽  
Social Norm ◽  
Peer Group ◽  
Selection Problem ◽  
Monetary Incentives ◽  
Optimal Contracting ◽  
The Social ◽  
Adverse Selection Problem ◽  
Group Agents

Research in sociology and ethics suggests that individuals adhere to social norms of behavior established by their peers. Within an agency framework, we model endogenous social norms by assuming that each agent's cost of implementing an action depends on the social norm for that action, defined to be the average level of that action chosen by the agent's peer group. We show how endogenous social norms alter the effectiveness of monetary incentives, determine whether it is optimal to group agents in a single or two separate organizations, and may give rise to a costly adverse selection problem when agents' sensitivities to social norms are unobservable. (JEL D23, D82, D86, Z13)

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