Self-Image and Economic Behavior

This thesis consists of four papers studying image concerns in three unique settings. The first paper develops a model incorporating self-image into the buyer's utility in a ''Pay-What-You-Want'' (PWYW) pricing scheme. We introduce heterogeneity in consumption utility and image-sensitivity, generating different purchase decisions and optimal prices across individuals. When a good's fixed price is lower than a threshold fair value, PWYW can lead to a lower utility. This may result in a lower purchase rate and higher average price, accounting for previously unexplained field experimental evidence.The second paper presents an analysis of PWYW in competition which explains its entry and limited spread in the market. Sellers choose their pricing schemes sequentially while consumers share their surplus. We show that the profitability and popularity of PWYW depend not only on consumers' preferences, but also on market structure, product characteristics and sellers' strategies. While there is no equilibrium where PWYW dominates the market, given a sufficiently high level of surplus-sharing and product differentiation, it is chosen by the second mover to avoid Bertrand competition.The third paper is motivated by conflicts of self-interests which often lead to expression of emotion to unrelated parties. We study non-instrumental verbal expression in binary ultimatum games, where receivers can comment either privately or to a third-party audience prior to accepting or rejecting the offer. The potential for gossip is sufficient to induce image concerns in senders, resulting in fairer offers in the audience treatment. Consequently, despite insignificant effect on receivers' behavior, the possibility of verbal expression to an audience is found to increase co-operation and hence welfare. There is demand for verbal expression even when it is unobserved or not triggered by negative stimulus. We find no evidence that this is motivated by self-esteem.In the fourth paper, we manipulate the information subjects can share on the web concerning socially sensitive actions (public good contribution) and visibility (selfie) to determine the effect on social image, as captured by the price subjects demand for publication. The overall conclusion from the experiment is that theory about social reputation can predict subjects' social-signaling behavior. People take costly decisions to ''filter'' information about themselves (in retrospect) before it is published. We also report results of a more exploratory nature and find that taking a selfie has a strong negative impact on cooperation among frequent selfie takers, but not on other subjects

Are economics conferences gender-neutral? Evidence from Ireland

We study gender inequality in conference acceptance using data from the Irish Economic Association annual conference from 2016 to 2022, exploiting the introduction of anonymised submission in 2021 to study the effect of blinding. While no gender gap is observed in the organisers’ acceptance decisions, there is an indication of in-group gender bias at the reviewer stage. In particular, male reviewers persistently give higher scores to male-authored papers. Evidence suggests that the bias stems from unconscious stereotyping against lesser-known female authors. Anonymisation eliminates the in-group bias of male reviewers, but introduces a bias in favour of male authors for female reviewers.Irish Economic AssociationIrish Society for Women in Economic

Compliance Spending Aversion: An Unintended Consequence of Charity Regulation

Charities are increasingly required to spend more resources on administrative tasks to comply with regulations. Given previous findings on donors’ overhead aversion, namely that donors avoid giving to charities with a high ratio of overhead relative to program spending, we investigate whether donors also penalize charities that spend high shares of donations on administrative compliance tasks, despite these tasks being outside the charities’ control. The results of an incentivized online experiment with a nationally representative sample from Ireland (n=1,032) suggest that donors are averse to compliance spending and that this aversion is almost as strong as the aversion to other types of overhead. Our findings indicate that well-intended regulations may have the unintended consequence of reducing charitable giving. They also suggest that reducing administrative burden for charities might increase donations. Quantifying how much charities spend on administrative compliance tasks may provide useful insights to inform decisions about the optimal level and process of charity regulation

Can Social Pressure Stifle Free Speech?

This paper studies public opinion in the context of strong social norms that can induce conformity and self-censorship. We present a model that highlights how social pressure can affect the public expression of opinion either through a change in publicly stated views (conformity) or by inducing self-censorship (silence). In a series of pre-registered online experiments in the US, we elicit participants’ views on two controversial topics (race and gender) and their willingness to publish these views online in an incentivized manner. The empirical patterns are consistent with the presence of ideologically left-wing social norms: participants who held left-wing views were more willing to publish their opinions, and those who were randomly made aware of the prospect of publication reported less conservative views. A priming information treatment, in which participants were informed about cancel culture and the potential negative backlash from social media posts, induced some conformity and silencing, but the results were generally weak and not statistically significant. Finally, a social information treatment, which informed respondents about high rates of others’ willingness to speak up, significantly decreased self-censorship. We use our theoretical model, and empirical estimates from the experiment about the value of "speaking up", to analyze potential welfare implications. The analysis reveals that social norms which restrict freedom of expression may enhance social welfare

Creative destruction in science

Drawing on the concept of a gale of creative destruction in a capitalistic economy, we argue that initiatives to assess the robustness of findings in the organizational literature should aim to simultaneously test competing ideas operating in the same theoretical space. In other words, replication efforts should seek not just to support or question the original findings, but also to replace them with revised, stronger theories with greater explanatory power. Achieving this will typically require adding new measures, conditions, and subject populations to research designs, in order to carry out conceptual tests of multiple theories in addition to directly replicating the original findings. To illustrate the value of the creative destruction approach for theory pruning in organizational scholarship, we describe recent replication initiatives re-examining culture and work morality, working parents\u2019 reasoning about day care options, and gender discrimination in hiring decisions. Significance statement It is becoming increasingly clear that many, if not most, published research findings across scientific fields are not readily replicable when the same method is repeated. Although extremely valuable, failed replications risk leaving a theoretical void\u2014 reducing confidence the original theoretical prediction is true, but not replacing it with positive evidence in favor of an alternative theory. We introduce the creative destruction approach to replication, which combines theory pruning methods from the field of management with emerging best practices from the open science movement, with the aim of making replications as generative as possible. In effect, we advocate for a Replication 2.0 movement in which the goal shifts from checking on the reliability of past findings to actively engaging in competitive theory testing and theory building. Scientific transparency statement The materials, code, and data for this article are posted publicly on the Open Science Framework, with links provided in the article

Venting and Gossiping in Conflicts: Emotion Expression in Ultimatum Games

Conflicts often lead to expression of emotion to unrelated parties. We study non-instrumental emotion expression in binary ultimatum games, where receivers can express emotion either privately or to a third-party audience prior to accepting or rejecting the offer. The possibility of emotion expression to an audience increases welfare, but this is driven by senders behaving more fairly rather than any change in receivers' behaviour. We thus show that the role of emotion expression in increasing co-operation is mainly driven by the punishment motive. There is demand for emotion expression even when it is unobserved, this is motivated by low self-esteem

Pay-What-You-Want in Competition

Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing schemes are popular in certain industries and not others. We model the seller's choice of pricing scheme under various market structures assuming consumers share their surplus. We show that the profitability and popularity of PWYW depend not only on consumers' preferences, but also on market structure, product characteristics and sellers' strategies. While there is no equilibrium where PWYW dominates the market, given a sufficiently high level of surplus-sharing and product differentiation, it is chosen by the second mover to avoid Bertrand competition. The equilibrium results and their associated market characteristics are consistent with empirical examples of PWY

Effect of Effort on Self Image: The Case of Monotonically Increasing Self-Image Functions

In this paper, the model of moral motivation as developed by Brekke et al (2003) is analysed with the new assumption that self-image is an increasing function of effort. While the effects of increased efficiency and new information on optimal effort levels are largely similar, different results are obtained when individuals are faced with responsibility and economic incentives. Following Brekke et al, this paper uses the example of dugnad, whereby members of an organisation can choose to voluntarily do practical work for the organisation. Participation is sustainable as a Nash equilibrium even when it is not considered morally ideal. Two specific examples are used to demonstrate the different behaviours produced when varying the steepness of the self-image functions. All results adhere to previously established theories on responsibility and crowding out

Venting and Gossiping in Conflicts : Verbal Expression in Ultimatum Games

Conflicts often lead to expression of emotion to unrelated parties. We study non-instrumental verbal expression in binary ultimatum games, where receivers can comment either privately or to a third-party audience prior to accepting or rejecting the offer. The potential for gossip is sufficient to induce image concerns in senders, resulting in fairer offers in the audience treatment. Consequently, despite insignificant effect on receivers’ behaviour, the possibility of verbal expression to an audience is found to increase co-operation and hence welfare. There is demand for verbal expression even when it is unobserved or not triggered by negative stimulus

Effect of effort on self-image: monotonically increasing self-image functions

The model of moral motivation as developed by Brekke et al. (2003) is analysed with the new assumption that self-image is an increasing function of effort. While the effects of increased efficiency and new information on optimal effort levels are similar, different results are obtained when individuals are faced with volunteering opportunities with and without non-participation fees. Most significantly, participation is sustainable as a Nash equilibrium even when it is not considered morally ideal. All results adhere to previously established theories on responsibility and crowding-out