Shaping beliefs in experimental markets for expert services: Guilt aversion and the impact of promises and money-burning options
Source
Games and Economic Behavior, 81, (2013), pp. 145-164ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

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Organization
Financiële economie en ondernemingsfinanciering
Journal title
Games and Economic Behavior
Volume
vol. 81
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 145
Page end
p. 164
Subject
Distributional Conflicts in a Globalizing World: Consequences for State-Market-Civil Society ArrangementsAbstract
In a credence goods game with an expert and a consumer, we study experimentally the impact of two devices that are predicted to induce consumer-friendly behavior if the expert has a propensity to feel guilty when he believes that he violates the consumer's payoff expectations: (i) an opportunity for the expert to make a non-binding promise; and (ii) an opportunity for the consumer to burn money. In belief-based guilt aversion theory the first opportunity shapes an expert's behavior if an appropriate promise is made and if it is expected to be believed by the consumer; by contrast, the second opportunity might change behavior even though this option is never used along the predicted path. Experimental results confirm the behavioral relevance of (i) but fail to confirm (ii).
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [227883]
- Electronic publications [107369]
- Nijmegen School of Management [17889]
- Open Access publications [76497]
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