Year: 2015
Type: report
Abstract: We study a dictator game where the dictators first indicate their willingness to give in a decision form and then allocate 10 yuan cash to the receiver in an envelope.The dictators are informed that their giving has to be an integer in Treatment 1, and a round number of 5 in Treatment 2 after they fill in the form.The results show that (1) People are on average more generous when writing a number on paper than allocating real cash; (2) The difference between willingness to give and actual giving is statistically significant in the case of divisible money (Treatment 1), but not significant in the case of indivisible money (Treatment 2); and (3) A substantial fraction (25%) of individuals do not follow the rounding rule in Treatment 2. The deviation from the rounding rule can be partly explained by an augmented version of the ERC model by Bolton and Ockenfels (2000).
Authors: Te Bao, Xu Tian, Xiaohua Yu
Institution: University of Göttingen
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2255915331