Social Influence in Prosocial Behavior: Evidence from a Large-Scale Experiment
通过一项防止社会学习的大规模实验，研究发现人们会因同伴的激励预期而调整自己的贡献，从众行为主要由与同伴社会距离近的人驱动，且当激励被认为会降低同伴贡献时，参与者也会减少自身贡献。
Abstract We propose a novel experiment that prevents social learning, thus allowing us to disentangle the underlying mechanisms of social influence. Subjects observe their peer’s incentives, but not their behavior. We find evidence of conformity: When individuals believe that incentives make others contribute more, they also increase their contributions. Conformity is driven by individuals who feel socially close to their peer. However, when incentives are not expected to raise their peer’s contributions, participants reduce their own contributions. Our data are consistent with an erosion of norm adherence when prosocial behavior of the social reference is driven by extrinsic motives, and cannot be explained by incentive inequality or altruistic crowding out. These findings show scope for social influence in settings with limited observability and offer insights into the mediators of conformity.