TITLE:
What Motivates Costless Altruism? Evidence from Laboratory Experiments
AUTHORS:
Zhi Fan, Keqiang Li, Ya Zhou
KEYWORDS:
Costless Altruistic Behaviors, Self-Interest, Reciprocity, Reward, Punishment
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.10 No.2,
April
1,
2020
ABSTRACT: Costless altruistic behaviors are special altruistic
behaviors that benefit others at no own cost. While in literature, the
motivations of typical altruistic behaviors that generally involve own cost
have been studied intensively, it is not clear yet, on the flip side, what
motivations drive costless altruistic behaviors. In this paper, we examine how
often costless altruistic behaviors happen and, if not always, the potential
determinants of costless altruistic behaviors. Specifically, we conduct a
series of human-computer experiments of repeated emotion game, separating the
impacts of emotion and payoff on the occurrence of costless altruistic
behaviors. We find that costless altruistic behaviors do not always happen, and
the considerations regarding emotion (e.g., reciprocity) and self-payoff are
two important determinants. Additionally, we find that rewarding altruistic
behaviors and punishing unaltruistic behaviors lead to more costless altruistic
behaviors, thus, can potentially promote the overall social welfare.