Conflicts and prosocial preferences
利用印尼亚齐冲突调查数据，发现冲突暴露程度与个人公共品贡献意愿呈非线性关系：低强度冲突减少贡献，超过阈值后贡献增加。
How economic agents’ preferences—such as individual time preferences, risk preferences, and prosocial preferences—are formed is a central question in economics, with important implications for understanding decision-making behavior. This study examines the nonlinear effect of conflict exposure on prosocial preferences, measured using “tax game” survey questions from the 2008 Aceh Reintegration and Livelihood Survey (ARLS). Leveraging variation in individual conflict exposure during one of the longest-lasting conflicts in recent history in Aceh, Indonesia, the analysis reveals a nonlinear relationship between conflict intensity and individuals’ willingness to contribute to public goods. Specifically, contributions decrease as conflict exposure intensifies up to a certain threshold, beyond which contributions increase. These findings are robust to alternative measures of conflict exposure and the inclusion of relevant control variables, providing consistent evidence of the nonlinear association.