Social Distance and Social Decisions

Expectations and Decisions in the Volunteer’s Dilemma: Effects of Social Distance and Social Projection

In a Volunteer's Dilemma (VoD) one individual needs to bear a cost so that a public good can be provided. Expectations regarding what others will do play a critical role because they would ideally be negatively correlated with own decisions; yet, a social-projection heuristic generates positive correlations. In a series of 2-person-dilemma studies with over 1,000 participants, we find that expe...

Social networks and vaccination decisions

Robust Social Decisions

Social Networks and Vaccination Decisions

We combine survey responses, network data, and medical records in order to examine how friends affect the decision to get vaccinated against influenza. The random assignment of undergraduates to residential halls at a large private university generates exogenous variation in exposure to the vaccine, enabling us to credibly identify social effects. We find evidence of positive peer influences on...

Social identification and investment decisions

This paper investigates the role of social identification in investment decisions. Social identity is an aspect of self-image based on in-group preferences and a perception of belonging to a social group. We collected survey data from retail clients of the only two banks in the Netherlands that exclusively offer socially responsible investment products and savings accounts. Our data show that a...