Year: 2022
Type: article
Abstract: If individuals tend to behave like their reference group, is it because of peer effects, self-selection, or both? Using a peer effect model allowing for conformity and link formation, we designed a real-effort laboratory experiment in which individuals could misreport their performance and select their peers. Our results reveal both a preference for conformity and homophilous link formation, but only among individuals cheating in isolation. This suggests that such link formation was not motivated by a taste for similarity but by acquiring self-serving information. Importantly, we reject the presence of a self-selection bias in the peer effect estimates by showing that the size of peer effects is similar when identical peers were randomly assigned and when individuals selected them.
Institutions: Centre d'Économie de la Sorbonne, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Laval, Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis on Organizations, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, IZA - Institute of Labor Economics, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St Etienne
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $1,399
OpenAlex ID: W4283774467