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

• We design a donations vs. own money choice experiment comparing three differenttreatments. In two of the treatments the pay-offs are hypothetical. In the first of these, a shortcheap talk script was used, and subjects were required to state their own preferences in thisscenario. In the second, subjects were asked to state how they believed an average studentwould respond to the choices. In the third treatment the pay-offs were real, allowing us to usethe results to compare the validity of the two hypothetical treatments. We find a stronghypothetical bias in both hypothetical treatments where the marginal willingness to pay fordonations are higher when subjects state their own preferences but lower when subjects statewhat they believe are other students preferences. The explanation is probably a self-imageeffect in both cases. We find that it is mainly women who are prone to hypothetical bias inthis study

Subject headings

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

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

Keyword

Stated preferences

cheap talk

hypothetical bias

third person approach

choice

experiment

Economics

Nationalekonomi

Stated preferences

cheap talk

hypothetical bias

third person approach

choice experiment

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

rap (subject category)