Do you do what you say or do you do what you say others do?

• We design a donations vs. own money choice experiment and compare the results from three different treatments. In two of the treatments the pay-offs are hypothetical. In the first of these, a short cheap talk script was used and subjects were required to state their own preferences in this scenario. In the second treatment, subjects were asked to state how they believed the average student would respond to the choices. In the third treatment the pay-offs were real, allowing us to use the results to compare the validity of the two hypothetical treatments. Our hypothesis is that when subjects are asked to state how they believe an average person would respond, they will use their own preferences in their responses without using the survey situation for self-enhancement. However, we find a strong hypothetical bias in both hypothetical treatments where the marginal willingness to pay for donations is higher when subjects state their own preferences but lower when subjects state what they believe are other peoples preferences. Our explanation is that subjects use the survey situation to bolster their self-image. We also find that it is mainly women who are prone to hypothetical bias in this study

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Nationalekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Economics (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Economics

Nationalekonomi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)