Beware Of Popular Kids Bearing Gifts: A Framed Field Experiment - Jignan Chen, Daniel Houser, Natalia Montinari, And Marco Piovesan (Interdisciplinary Center For Economic Science, George Mason University) Page 2

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Beware Of Popular Kids Bearing Gifts:
A Framed Field Experiment
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Jingnan Chen
, Daniel Houser
, Natalia Montinari
, Marco Piovesan
This version: February 26, 2014
Abstract
The literature on pro-social behavior shows that older children are more generous than
younger children; however, the level of individual generosity is heterogeneous even
between children of the same age. This paper investigates whether a child’s popularity
affects a child’s generosity. Our participants – 231 children, six to twelve years old –
decide how many of their four colored wristbands they want to share with another
anonymous child. We manipulate the visibility of this decision: in treatment Public, the
decisions are revealed to the entire class at the end of the game, whereas in treatment
Private children’s decisions remain secret. In addition, we elicited each child’s network
of friends using an innovative “seating map” mechanism. Our results reveal that more
popular children are more generous in Public than Private decision environments, while
less popular children behave similarly in both cases. Moreover, older children in Public
display greater generosity than (i) older children in Private and (ii) younger children in
either Public or Private. Finally, in Public, older and more popular children share more
than less popular older children, and more than younger children regardless of popularity;
whereas, in Private there is no effect of popularity on children of any age.
Keywords: popularity; children; field experiment; public decision making; pro-
social behavior
JEL Codes: C93, J13
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ICES, Department of Economics, George Mason University.
ICES, Department of Economics, George Mason University.
Department of Economics, Lund University.
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Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

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