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Guilt averse or reciprocal? Looking at behavioral motivations in the trust game

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2025

Yola Engler ,
Rudolf Kerschbamer  and
Lionel Page Open the ORCID record for Lionel Page [Opens in a new window]
Yola Engler
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology and QuBE, Brisbane, Australia
Rudolf Kerschbamer
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria
Lionel Page*
Affiliation:
School of Economics and Finance, Queensland University of Technology and QuBE, Brisbane, Australia
*
e-mail: lionel.page@qut.edu.au
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Abstract

For the trust game, recent models of belief-dependent motivations make opposite predictions regarding the correlation between back transfers and second-order beliefs of the trustor: while reciprocity models predict a negative correlation, guilt-aversion models predict a positive one. This paper tests the hypothesis that the inconclusive results in the previous studies investigating the reaction of trustees to their beliefs are due to the fact that reciprocity and guilt aversion are behaviorally relevant for different subgroups and that their impact cancels out in the aggregate. We find little evidence in support of this hypothesis and conclude that type heterogeneity is unlikely to explain previous results.

Keywords

Behavioral game theoryExperimentIntention based preferences

JEL classification

D63: Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement D64: Altruism • Philanthropy • Intergenerational Transfers C25: Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models • Discrete Regressors • Proportions • Probabilities C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C70: General
Type
Original Paper
Information
Journal of the Economic Science Association , Volume 4 , Issue 1 , July 2018 , pp. 1 - 14
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40881-018-0051-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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