Divided Loyalists or Conditional Cooperators? Creating Consensus about Cooperation in Multiple Simultaneous Social Dilemmas

The current social dilemma literature lacks theoretical consensus regarding how individuals behave when facing multiple simultaneous social dilemmas. The divided-loyalty hypothesis, from organizational theory, predicts that cooperation will decline as individuals experience multiple social dilemmas with different compared to the same group members. The conditional-cooperation hypothesis, from behavioral economics, predicts that cooperation will increase as individuals experience multiple social dilemmas with different compared to the same group members. We employ a laboratory experiment to create consensus between these literatures and find support for the conditional-cooperation hypothesis. The positive effect of interacting with different group members comes from participants having an opportunity to shift their cooperative behavior from the less cooperative to the more cooperative group

Product Bundling as a Behavioral Nudge: Investigating Consumer Fruit and Vegetable Selection using Dual-Self Theory

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that at least 68% of U.S. adults aged 20 and older are overweight with BMIs of 25+. A major component of this problem is the decision to habitually consume high quantities of low-nutrient, high-calorie foods (NIH, 2012). This study uses an artefactual field experiment on food choice, conducted in a large Midwestern U.S. city during fall 2015, to explore whether product bundles (consisting of primarily fruit & vegetable (F&V) items) can serve as a behavioral intervention to increase F&V selection. Also of interest was determining whether shopping under cognitive load influenced both item and bundle selection using a dual-self framework, and whether bundles need offer a price discount. Study participants shopped a grocery display under one of six different treatments, with differences examined among the proportion of items selected from three categories: Fruit and Vegetables, Junk Food/Snacks, and Protein/Dairy/Grains. The proportions of items selected by category were also analyzed using a fractional multinomial regression model. Results uncover that product bundles need not offer a price discount in order to effectively increase F&V selection. In fact, discounted bundles were counterproductive at increasing F&Vs when shoppers were under high cognitive load. Product bundles may be preferred by consumers as a means through which to lessen the cognitive strain of the shopping process, and could serve as a potential behavioral intervention to increase retail F&V sales