Giving has been shown by many studies to be a social phenomenon. However, while people may desire to conform to the donation of others, it is unclear how fundraisers should take advantage of this. In this paper we conduct a field experiment in a workplace, in which employees are sent prominent...

Several papers have documented that when subjects play with standard laboratory endowmentsʺ they make less self-interested choices then when they use money they have either earned through a laboratory task or brought from outside the lab. In the context of a charitable giving experiment we...

When person A takes an action that can be interpreted as “making an offer” to person B and B “rejects the offer,” then A may “lose face.” This loss of face (LoF) and consequent disutility will occur only if these actions are common knowledge to A and B. While under some circumstances...

Abstract Previous experimental and observational work suggests that people act more generously when they are observed and observe others in social settings. But the explanation for this is unclear. An individual may want to send a signal of her generosity in order to improve her own reputation....

Previous work has found that in social dilemmas, the selfish always free-ride, while others will cooperate if they expect their peers to do so as well. Outcomes may thus depend on conditional cooperators’ beliefs about the number of selfish types. An early round of the game may be played...