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on Social Norms and Social Capital |
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Issue of 2024‒02‒19
seven papers chosen by Fabio Sabatini, Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza” |
| By: | Darden, Michael E. (The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School); Macis, Mario (The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School) |
| Abstract: | We present results from a nationally representative survey of American adults, guided by a simple theoretical model expressing health care-seeking behavior as a function of economic and behavioral fundamentals and highlighting the role of trust. We report several findings. First, we document a strong association between higher levels of trust in the health care system and reported care-seeking behavior, both retrospective and anticipated. This relationship holds across several care scenarios, from routine check-ups to vaccinations. Second, the impact of trust on health care utilization is similar in magnitude to that of factors such as income and education, long recognized as crucial in the existing literature. Third, the relationship between trust and care-seeking behavior appears to be mediated by key mechanisms from our theoretical framework, notably individuals' beliefs about the system's effectiveness in managing their health and their personal disutility tied to medical visits. Fourth, we ask respondents about trust in specific health care system sectors, and we find important heterogeneity in the associations between trust and care-seeking behavior, notably between trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the likelihood to receive flu and COVID-19 vaccinations. Finally, we find no differential relationship between trust and care-seeking for Black respondents, but we find important differences by age and political affiliation. Our findings hold significant implications for policy, particularly given that trust in medical and, more broadly, scientific expertise is increasingly difficult to establish. |
| Keywords: | trust, health care, disparities |
| JEL: | I11 I12 I14 I18 |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16720&r=soc |
| By: | Carozzi, Felipe; Pinchbeck, Edward William; Repetto, Luca |
| Abstract: | What drives soldiers to risk their life in combat? We show that the legacy of war creates lasting conditions that encourage younger generations to take greater risks when fighting for their country. Using individual-level data from over 4 million British war records, we show that WWI deaths deeply affected local communities and the behaviour of the next generation of soldiers. Servicemen from localities that suffered heavier losses in WWI were more likely to die or to be awarded military honours for bravery in WW2. To explain these findings, we document that WWI deaths promoted civic capital in the inter-war period - as demonstrated by the creation of lasting war memorials, veterans' associations and charities, and increased voter participation. In addition, we show that sons of soldiers killed in WWI were more likely to die in combat, suggesting that both community-level and family-level transmission of values were important in this context. |
| Keywords: | world war; combat motivation; conflict; civic capital; memory; BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grant SRG2021- 210936 |
| JEL: | D74 D91 O15 Z10 |
| Date: | 2023–08–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:121292&r=soc |
| By: | Andor, Mark Andreas; Grossmann, Igor; Hönow, Nils Christian; Tomberg, Lukas |
| Abstract: | Prosocial behavior is crucial for tackling global challenges such as climate change, poverty, and conflict, yet people often prioritize personal benefits over the common good. A classic philosophical proposition is that prosocial behavior benefits from psychological wisdom - a concept characterized by cognitive and behavioral scientists by expression of intellectual humility, open-mindedness towards different ways in which events may unfold, as well as consideration and integration of diverse viewpoints. We investigate the relationship between these features of wisdom and prosocial behavior in an incentivized donation experiment, as well as self-reported real-world behaviors such as blood and charity donations across 13, 500 households in nine European countries. Our findings reveal that greater expression of wisdom was systematically aligned with contributions to climate change mitigation, donating blood and money to charitable causes, compliance with rules and behaviors to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, voting in parliamentary elections, volunteering and being a member of an environmental group. These results were robust across experimental conditions varying vantage point (self-focused or other-focused), when examining wisdom in reflections specific to climate donation decisions, or reflections on one's personal life experiences, or when accounting for effect socioeconomic characteristics, personality, and values of prosocial behavior. Finally, the association was observed in each of the country samples, albeit with varying strengths. |
| Abstract: | Prosoziales Verhalten ist für die Bewältigung globaler Herausforderungen wie Klimawandel, Armut und Konflikte von entscheidender Bedeutung, jedoch stellen Menschen oftmals den persönlichen Nutzen über das Gemeinwohl. Laut einer klassischen philosophischen These wird prosoziales Verhalten erhöht durch Weisheit, einem Konzept, das von Verhaltenswissenschaftlerinnen und Verhaltenswissenschaftlern durch den Ausdruck intellektueller Bescheidenheit, Aufgeschlossenheit gegenüber verschiedenen Möglichkeiten, wie sich Ereignisse entfalten können, sowie durch die Berücksichtigung und Integration unterschiedlicher Standpunkte charakterisiert wird. Wir untersuchen die Beziehung zwischen der durch diese Facetten ausgedrückten Weisheit und prosozialem Verhalten in einem Spendenexperiment sowie in angegebenem realen Verhalten, bspw. Blut- und Geldspenden anhand von 13.500 Haushalten in neun europäischen Ländern. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass eine stärkere Ausprägung von Weisheit systematisch mit höheren Spenden zum Klimaschutz, Blut- und Geldspenden für wohltätige Zwecke, der Einhaltung von Regeln und Verhaltensweisen zur Eindämmung der Ausbreitung des COVID-19-Virus, der Teilnahme an Parlamentswahlen, Freiwilligenarbeit und der Mitgliedschaft in einer Umweltgruppe verbunden war. Diese Ergebnisse waren unter verschiedenen Versuchsbedingungen, über unterschiedliche Perspektiven (selbst- oder fremdorientiert), bei der Untersuchung der Weisheit im Kontext von Klimaspendenentscheidungen und im Kontext von persönlichen Lebenserfahrungen robust, sowie auch unter Berücksichtigung von sozioökonomischen oder persönlichkeitsbezogenen Merkmalen. Der Zusammenhang wurde darüber hinaus in jeder der Länderstichproben beobachtet, wenn auch in unterschiedlicher Stärke. |
| Keywords: | Wise reasoning, prosocial behavior, field experiment, survey, epistemic cognition |
| JEL: | D83 D91 Z13 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:rwirep:281195&r=soc |
| By: | Houda Nait El Barj; Theophile Sautory |
| Abstract: | We study the dynamics of opinions in a setting where a leader has a payoff that depends on agents' beliefs and where agents derive psychological utility from their beliefs. Agents sample a signal that maximises their utility and then communicate with each other through a network formed by disjoint social groups. The leader has a choice to target a finite set of social groups with a specific signal to influence their beliefs and maximise his returns. Heterogeneity in agents' preferences allows us to analyse the evolution of opinions as a dynamical system with asymmetric forces. We apply our model to explain the emergence of hatred and the spread of racism in a society. We show that when information is restricted, the equilibrium level of hatred is determined solely by the belief of the most extremist agent in the group regardless of the inherent structure of the network. On the contrary, when information is dense, the space is completely polarised in equilibrium with the presence of multiple "local truths" which oscillate in periodic cycles. We find that when preferences are uniformly distributed, the equilibrium level of hatred depends solely on the value of the practical punishment associated with holding a hate belief. Our finding suggests that an optimal policy to reduce hatred should focus on increasing the cost associated with holding a racist belief. |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2401.07178&r=soc |
| By: | Jonathan Eggleston; Chase Sawyer |
| Abstract: | Social capital, the strength of people’s friendship networks and community ties, has been hypothesized as an important determinant of survey participation. Investigating this hypothesis has been difficult given data constraints. In this paper, we provide insights by investigating how response rates and nonresponse bias in the American Community Survey are correlated with county-level social network data from Facebook. We find that areas of the United States where people have more exclusive and homogenous social networks have higher nonresponse bias and lower response rates. These results provide further evidence that the effects of social capital may not be simply a matter of whether people are socially isolated or not, but also what types of social connections people have and the sociodemographic heterogeneity of their social networks. |
| Date: | 2024–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-01&r=soc |
| By: | Harleman, Max; Weber, Jeremy G. |
| Abstract: | A core public administration literature seeks to understand whether decentralized collective action institutions will emerge to provide public goods, such as management of environmental resources. Few studies examine how they perform relative to the state at providing public goods, and they fail to account for the possibility that the state might self-select into providing public goods in the most challenging contexts. If it does, finding that the state performs worse than collective action institutions could reflect its more challenging context rather than differences in knowledge, skill, or motivation. We examine several quantitative measures of performance in remediating polluted water discharges from abandoned coal mines in Pennsylvania, a task sometimes done by the state and sometimes by nonprofit watershed associations. We find that the two types of institutions address discharges with generally similar water quality problems and build systems that yield similar initial improvements in water quality. But watershed association systems better maintain effectiveness at reducing acidity and removing heavy metals over time. The findings suggest a role for sustained public investment in collective action institutions to address complex and enduring environmental problems. |
| Keywords: | collective action, abandoned mines, water quality, decentralization |
| JEL: | H4 Q5 |
| Date: | 2023–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:119861&r=soc |
| By: | Kevin Bauer; Yan Chen; Florian Hett; Michael Kosfeld |
| Abstract: | How does group identity affect belief formation? To address this question, we conduct a series of online experiments with a representative sample of individuals in the US. Using the setting of the 2020 US presidential election, we find evidence of intergroup preference across three distinct components of the belief formation cycle: a biased prior belief, avoidance of outgroup information sources, and a belief-updating process that places greater (less) weight on prior (new) information. We further find that an intervention reducing the salience of information sources decreases outgroup information avoidance by 50%. In a social learning context in wave 2, we find participants place 33% more weight on ingroup than outgroup guesses. Through two waves of interventions, we identify source utility as the mechanism driving group effects in belief formation. Our analyses indicate that our observed effects are driven by groupy participants who exhibit stable and consistent intergroup preferences in both allocation decisions and belief formation across all three waves. These results suggest that policymakers could reduce the salience of group and partisan identity associated with a policy to decrease outgroup information avoidance and increase policy uptake. |
| Keywords: | group identity, information demand, information processing, political polarization |
| JEL: | D47 C78 C92 D82 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10859&r=soc |