Ownership Effects in Dictator Games: Evidence from an Experimental Study

In this study, we tested the effect of time delays on sharing behavior. We conducted a dictator game to examine whether dictators change their sharing behaviors if they have more time between receiving and sharing money. When the response time was 2 hours, the sharing behavior of dictators was similar to sharing behavior in a standard game without time delay. However, if the dictators kept their received money for a week, they were remarkably less likely to share the money. This finding provides suggestive evidence of the ownership effect in sharing behavior.