Democracy and Resilient Pro-Social Behavioral Change: An Experimental Study

Kamei, K.

Abstract

Both experimental and empirical studies have shown that democratically imposing a policy that encourages cooperation may increase its effectiveness by enhancing the voters’ cooperation behavior. But, do those involved in the democratic decision-making process change their behavior when faced with an exogenously implemented rule? This paper experimentally shows that the voters that are involved in a successful democratic selection of a policy behave more pro-socially as consistent with recent studies. My experiment moreover shows that such a successful democratic imposition of the policy may increase the voters’ level of cooperation even when the policy is undemocratically imposed.

Citation

Kamei, K. (2016). Democracy and Resilient Pro-Social Behavioral Change: An Experimental Study. Social Choice and Welfare, 47(2), 359-378. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-016-0967-y

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 3, 2016
• Online Publication Date: May 26, 2016
• Publication Date: Aug 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: May 11, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: May 13, 2016
• Journal: Social Choice and Welfare
• Print ISSN: 0176-1714
• Electronic ISSN: 1432-217X
• Publisher: Springer
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 47
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 359-378
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00355-016-0967-y
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1412684
• Related Public URLs: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1756225