Do the Right Thing:The E¤ects of Moral Suasion on Cooperation

The use of moral appeals to a¤ect the behavior of others is pervasive (from the pulpit to ethics classes) but little is known about the e¤ects of moral suasion on behavior. In a series of experiments we study whether moral suasion a¤ects behavior in voluntary contribution games and the mechanisms by which behavior is altered. We …nd that observing a message with a moral standard according to the golden rule or, alternatively, utilitarian philosophy, results in a signi…cant but transitory increase in contributions above the levels observed for subjects that did not receive a message or received a message that advised them to contribute without a moral rationale. When players have the option of punishing each other after the contribution stage, the e¤ect of the moral messages on contributions becomes persistent: punishments and moral messages interact to sustain cooperation. We also investigate the mechanisms through which moral suasion operates and …nd it a¤ects both expectations and preferences. JEL codes: C9, H41. Keywords: moral suasion, morality, cooperation, public goods, ethics. For useful comments and suggestions we thank Alberto Alesina, Rachel Croson, Erik Eyster, Botond Koszegi, John Morgan, Santiago Oliveros, Parag Pathak, Louis Putterman, Matthew Rabin, Steve Tadelis, Dustin Tingley, as well as seminar and conference participants at Berkeley, FSU, Harvard/MIT, Brown, UCLA and Ecole Polytechnique. We thank Pantelis Solomon and Justin Tumlinson for research assistance as well as Berkeley’s XLab for …nancial and logistic support.