"Social information and the dynamics of norm-related beliefs" by James Tremewan

Topic

In an online experiment we investigate how social information, both normative and empirical, affect donations to a charity and associated norm-related beliefs. First we show that empirical expectations (beliefs about what others do), normative expectations (beliefs about what others think is morally correct), and personal norms (one's own belief about what is morally correct) are all independently important in determining donation decisions: subjects are estimated to be willing to sacrifice almost the maximum available amount to conform to a universally chosen amount rather than one that no one else chooses, or one that is personally viewed as "very acceptable" rather than "very unacceptable", with a smaller but statistically significant willingness to pay to conform to others' normative views. We then show that donations and all of these norm-related beliefs are shifted to varying degrees by exogenous information about others' actions or personal norms. Finally, taking advantage of measures of beliefs and donations both before and after the information interventions, we examine the channels through which the different types of information affect the different beliefs and ultimately donation decisions.