Substitution of social sustainability concerns under the Covid-19 pandemic.

Think tanks and political leaders have raised concerns about the implications that the Covid-19 response and reconstruction might have on other social objectives that were setting the international agenda before the Covid-19 pandemic. We present evidence for eight consecutive weeks during April-May 2020 for Austria, testing the extent to which Covid-19 concerns substitute other social concerns such as the climate crisis or the protection of vulnerable sectors of the society. We measure behavior in a simple donation task where participants receive €3 that they can distribute between themselves and a list of charitable organizations, which vary between treatments. We consider initially a list of eight charities, including a broad set of social concerns. Results show that introducing the WHO Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund significantly reduces the sum of donations to the original eight charities. This derives from two effects: First, introducing the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund does not significantly change aggregate donations. Second, results point to a high support to the WHO Covid-19 Fund. Overall, our results indicate that donations to diverse social concerns are partially substituted by donations to the Covid-19 fund; yet, this substitution does not fully replace all other social concerns. Results are robust to a 10-fold increase in endowment, with decisions made over €30.

Long Term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Concerns.

While some local, temporary past crises have boosted overall charitable donations, there have been concerns about potential substitution effects that the Covid-19 pandemic might have on other social objectives, such as tackling climate change and reducing inequality. We present results from a donation experiment (n = 1, 762), with data collected between April 2020 and January 2021. We combine data from (i) an online donation experiment, (ii) an extended questionnaire including perceptions, actions, and motives on the Covid-19 pandemic, the climate crisis, and poverty, as well as charitable behavior and (iii) epidemiological data. The experimental results show that donations to diverse social concerns are partially substituted by donations to the Covid-19 fund; yet, this substitution does not fully replace all other social concerns. Over time we observe no systematic trend in charitable donations. In regards to the determinants of individual donations, we observe that women donate more, people taking actions against Covid-19 and against poverty donate more, while those fearing risks from poverty donate less. In addition, we observe that the population under consideration is sensitive to the needs of others, enhancing total donations for higher Covid-19 incidence. For donations to each charity, we find that trusting a given charitable organization is the strongest explanatory factor of donations. JEL: L3, D64, Q54, I3, D9.

Psychopathy and Economic Behavior Among Prison Inmates: An Experiment.

This paper investigates whether there is a connection between psychopathy and certain manifestations of social and economic behavior, measured in a lab-in-the-field experiment with prison inmates. In order to test this main hypothesis, we let inmates play four games that have often been used to measure prosocial and antisocial behavior in previous experimental economics literature. Specifically, they play a prisoner's dilemma, a trust game, the equality equivalence test that elicits distributional preferences, and a corruption game. Psychopathy is measured by means of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP) questionnaire, which inmates filled out after having made their decisions in the four games. We find that higher scores in the LSRP are significantly correlated with anti-social behavior in the form of weaker reciprocity, lower cooperation, lower benevolence and more bribe-oriented decisions in the corruption game. In particular, not cooperating and bribe-maximizing decisions are associated with significantly higher LSRP primary and LSRP secondary scores. Not reciprocating is associated with higher LSRP primary and being spiteful with higher LSRP secondary scores.

Physiological and behavioral patterns of corruption.

We study the behavior and emotional arousal of the participants in an experimental auction, leading to an asymmetric social dilemma involving an auctioneer and two bidders. An antisocial transfer (bribe) which is beneficial for the auctioneer (official) is paid, if promised, by the winner of the auction. Some pro-social behavior on both the auctioneers' and the bidders' sides is observed even in the absence of any punishment mechanism (Baseline, Treatment 0). However, pro-social behavior is adopted by the vast majority of subjects when the loser of the auction can inspect the transaction between the winner and the auctioneer (Inspection, Treatment 1). The inspection and punishment mechanism is such that, if a bribe is (not) revealed, both corrupt agents (the denouncing bidder) lose(s) this period's payoffs. This renders the inspection option unprofitable for the loser and is rarely used, especially toward the end of the session, when pro-social behavior becomes pervasive. Subjects' emotional arousal was obtained through skin conductance responses. Generally speaking, our findings suggest that stronger emotions are associated with decisions deviating from pure monetary reward maximization, rather than with (un)ethical behavior per se. In fact, using response times as a measure of the subject's reflection during the decision-making process, we can associate emotional arousal with the conflict between primary or instinctive and secondary or contemplative motivations and, more specifically, with deviations from the subject's pure monetary interest.