Social‐benefits stigma and subsequent competitiveness
通过实验室实验，研究因获得低地位福利而产生的污名如何影响人们后续参与竞争的意愿，发现扩大福利资格可能对新增合格者产生意外后果。
Abstract We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore how benefit‐eligibility stigma drives subsequent decisions to enter competition. We induce a stigma associated with a low‐status benefit and then introduce “plausible deniability” to reduce this stigma by expanding benefit eligibility to a middle‐status group. When newly‐eligible individuals qualify for the benefit, their rate of entry into a subsequent and unrelated tournament is reduced by 17–20 percentage points compared to the treatment in which they do not qualify. A potential interpretation of our results would suggest expanding for certain government assistance programs may produce unintended consequences for the newly eligible.