{"title":"The Ambiguity Box: A new tool to generate ambiguity in the lab","authors":"Andrea Morone , Rocco Caferra","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102299","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102299","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The Ambiguity Box is a software tool that visualizes uncertainty in laboratory experiments. It is a dynamic frame composed of squares that randomly change colours, creating an uncertain and ambiguous environment. This encourages participants to infer the probabilities of each colour. The tool contributes to the economic literature by introducing a new layer of uncertainty, overcoming limitations of traditional tools like the Bingo Blower. The Ambiguity Box is more practical as it is software-based and can be used with any electronic device. It is flexible, allowing experimenters to predetermine the number of squares of each colour, making it adaptable to various experimental designs. It is easily scalable, suitable for use in different contexts, and allows for the exploration of decision-making under ambiguity in diverse settings, dealing also with extremely low probabilities.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142446986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Giuseppe Attanasi , James C. Cox , Vjollca Sadiraj
{"title":"Festival games: Inebriated and sober altruists","authors":"Giuseppe Attanasi , James C. Cox , Vjollca Sadiraj","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102296","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102296","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We report a staged field experiment during three concerts in the South of Italy characterized by the same traditional music and a comparable average level of alcohol consumption by attendees. Individual blood alcohol concentration is measured with electronic breathalyzers. The experimental games are payoff-equivalent private property and common property trust games. We find that alcohol consumption is associated with less sharing in the private property game and lower efficiency in the common property game. There is a game-form effect for sober participants who share less in the common property game than in the private property game. This finding is consistent with revealed altruism theory as more sharing reveals more altruistic behavior. The absence of such game-form effect among non-sober participants is consistent with alcohol myopia. Tourists share more than local residents, significantly so for sober participants. The private property game elicits more efficiency than the common property game. This game-form effect is robust across sober and non-sober participants.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142446985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Causal effects of information friction on willingness to pay for hurricane-resistant buildings","authors":"Sebastain N. Awondo, Lawrence S. Powell","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102297","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102297","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We investigate the causal effects of information provision on willingness to pay (WTP) for precautionary building standards. In a randomized stated preference field experiment, we present video evidence that hurricane-resistant building standards outperform traditional building standards to a random sample of homeowners. Our analysis reveals evidence consistent with causal effects of video information on WTP for hurricane-resistant buildings. Overall, alleviating performance information friction increases WTP by $634 on average and three times more among risk-neutral homeowners if the WTP payment card range is not truncated.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142425106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"","authors":"Egor Bronnikov","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102294","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102294","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142425107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Giuseppe Attanasi , Stefania Bortolotti , Simona Cicognani , Antonio Filippin
{"title":"The drunk side of trust: Generalized and instantaneous trust at gathering events","authors":"Giuseppe Attanasi , Stefania Bortolotti , Simona Cicognani , Antonio Filippin","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102293","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102293","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We present novel evidence on the nexus between alcohol intake and trust at a large cultural gathering event. Throughout six editions, we interviewed nearly 2,000 attendees and collected an objective measure of alcohol intake (Blood Alcohol Concentration, BAC) using electronic breathalyzers and self-perceived measures of intoxication. We elicited different self-reported trust measures toward eventgoers and the general public. While alcohol intoxication is not correlated with trust toward the general public, there is a positive and significant nexus between alcohol intake and trust toward the other participants in the event (<em>Instantaneous trust</em>). Only a small part of this effect (15%) is driven by an increased trust in other drinkers at the event. Taken together, these findings indicate endogenous group formation regarding alcohol intake.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142356950","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Adam Smith, human betterment, and his erroneous indentification with self-interested human action","authors":"Vernon L. Smith","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102292","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102292","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In this essay I discuss the proposition that Adam Smith has been widely misinterpreted as asserting in his second book, <em>The Wealth of Nations,</em> that emergent modern economies are driven by the strictly selfish motives of their human inhabitants. The propositions articulated in his first book, <em>The Theory of Moral Sentiments,</em> which offered a theory of society, extended seamlessly into his second book, and continued to be part of his theory of economy. In both works, he distinguished the universal state of being self-interested from actions taken in one's self-interest, and modeled people as creating and following rules of propriety that enabled them to better get along with their neighbors. This distinction explains why, in his second book, he refers to people following their “o<em>wn</em> interest” in their “own way” explicitly avoiding any suggestion that people pursued only their strictly selfish interests in the process of wealth creation. That cautionary effort failed, although Smith continues to be a spectacularly successful theorist of society and economy, especially of interest to scholars in behavioral and experimental economics.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142324016","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Future time reference and risk aversion","authors":"Donald Lien","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102291","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102291","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Chen (2013) suggests a weak future time reference (FTR) language would encourage the speaker to undertake the investment through the distance effect (i.e., future appears closer with weak FTR) and the precision effect (i.e., weak FTR leads to less precise future reward timing which increases the expected future value due to the convex discounting function). This paper provides an analytic counterexample invalidating this conclusion. To be specific, Chen's argument assumes the speaker is risk neutral. We incorporate risk aversion into the consideration and show that both effects would magnify the return and the risk of the investment simultaneously. Consequently, an appropriate degree of risk aversion can overturn the Chen's conclusion. We show the waiting time to receive the return from the investment plays an important role. When the expected waiting time is short or the uncertainty of the waiting time is large, a weak FTR language is more likely to decrease the investment.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142238236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Coordination in stag hunt games","authors":"Rui Silva","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102290","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102290","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Stag hunt games display a tension between a payoff superior option (stag) and a less risky but payoff inferior alternative (hare). We explore that tension by proposing a selection criterion (which we denote as <em>relative salience</em>) where subjects choose to coordinate in one option by comparing the salience of stag’s main aspect (its payoff) to the salience of hare’s main aspect (its risk) by accounting for both payoff-relevant factors and unobservable individual-specific (idiosyncratic) preferences. Using data from 10 experiments, we find that this criterion is a significant determinant of individual choices in stag-hunt games, outperforming other selection methods.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804324001277/pdfft?md5=2ee980272f33630ee89ce05d86b4a558&pid=1-s2.0-S2214804324001277-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142313033","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Robert Mackay , Astghik Mavisakalyan , Yashar Tarverdi
{"title":"Trust a few: Natural disasters and the disruption of trust in Africa","authors":"Robert Mackay , Astghik Mavisakalyan , Yashar Tarverdi","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102288","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102288","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Individuals are at their most mental plasticity in their impressionable years (ages 18–25 years) forming long-term attitudes and behaviours essential to functioning in a society, such as trust. In this paper we ask how exposure to natural disasters within the impressionable years may affect the formation of trust by matching data from over 1,000 disaster occurrences with data from 88,670 individuals across 36 African nations. Exploiting the frequency of disaster exposure across the impressionable years, we show that disaster exposure has a negative and significant association with generalized trust. Additionally, we show that disasters experienced during the impressionable years have an impact on other dimensions of interpersonal and institutional trust. Our findings are robust to a battery of tests and add to the evidence base on the lasting impacts of natural disasters on individuals and societies.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804324001253/pdfft?md5=4f4e0a6a95c23e1d0790264fa4df3d03&pid=1-s2.0-S2214804324001253-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142270787","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Individual differences in Bitcoin investment: The role of personality, attitudes, and knowledge","authors":"Sinja Müser , Moritz Hemmerich , Florian Schmitz","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102289","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102289","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Cryptocurrencies have found their way into the financial market as a serious alternative in recent years. In particular, Bitcoin is increasingly coming into focus. Currently, however, little is known why people invest in cryptocurrency or not. The present study seeks to shed light on individual difference variables potentially associated with these investment decisions. This includes personality traits, knowledge, and attitudes toward the social and political environment. The effective sample comprised 603 respondents who completed an online survey. Based on the proportion of their financial portfolio invested into Bitcoin, participants were divided into three groups: Non-Bitcoiners, Bitcoin Enthusiasts, and Bitcoin Maximalists. Group comparisons and prediction models indicated that Bitcoiners differed substantially from Non-Bitcoiners in justice-related attitudes as well as in specific knowledge about this cryptocurrency. By contrast, general political attitudes or reinforcement sensitivity did not differ much, and there was hardly a difference in basic dimensions of personality and general knowledge.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804324001265/pdfft?md5=0ea5439489cfa4ef8667a6ae040e21e2&pid=1-s2.0-S2214804324001265-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142270788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}