Test Of Social Preferences: An Experimental Study Beyond Homo Economicus

This paper investigate the test of social preferences behind the prosocial behaviors, centering on three kinds of classical game. Employing the related experiments and making use of the corresponding experimental data analysis, we made a empirical research of the test of social preferences behind the human beings' behaviors pursuing fairness, trust and cooperation, which are neglected by orthodox economics and also beyond homo economicus assumption of self-interest. Specifically, we consider three kinds of problems:the test of social preference behind the behavior pursuing fairness which the responder reject a positive offer by the proposer in the ultimatum game; the test of social preferences behind the trust action and trustworthiness action in the trust game; the test of social preferences behind the cooperation behavior in the public goods game. Meanwhile as an application of the test of social preferences, we compared the two methods measuring trust and made a empirical research about the relationship between the trust and cooperation.We first analyzed how to test social preferences behind the responders'rejection in the ultimatum game when the proposer offer a positive allocation. Employing a set of ultimatum game experiments and gathering the experimental data from Zhejiang and Beijing respectively, we made a investgation about the impact of intentions-based reciprocity preferences and outcomes-based inequality aversion to human behavior's decision. Through a mini ultimatum game in which the responder can signal different information about the intentions of the proposer, we found that the identical offers in an ultimatum game generate systematically different rejection rates depending on the other offers that are available to the proposer. The result shows that the reciprocity preferences play an important role in people's decision. Meanwhile we investigate the mechanism of the inequality aversion through a set of modified ultimatum games. We found that there are 38% and 89% of responders'behavior in guarantor game and impunity game respectively can not be explained by the inequality aversion theory. The result shows that people prefer the intentions of allocation more than the outcomes of allocation, which also means that the fairness of allocation process is more important than the fairness of allocation outcomes.Secondly, employing a "triadic trust design" we tested the social preferences behind the trust and trustworthiness actions in the trust game. We found that the variance in trust acctions is accounted for by expectation of trustworthiness but not altruism, while variance in trustworthiness actions is mainly accounted for by altruism with a comparatively small role of reciprocity. The significance of this conclusion indicates that the principal amount of investment trust game as a measure of the level of trust is appropriate. In addition, our test of social preferences behind the trustworthiness actions support the concluision in a larger sample, that is the structure of trustworthiness of Chinese people have special characteristics which is on the basis of altruism.Thirdly, by analyzing the differences between the inequality aversion and reciprocity and their specific manifestation in the pubic goods game, we discussed how to test the social preferences behind the cooperation behavior in detailed. Manipulating a set of four public goods game data, we found that the pattern of cooperation behavior in public goods game is consistent with inequality aversion but not reciprocity or altruism, which means that the motivation of the actions in public goods game and trust game is different, namley "the heterogeneity of social preferences".Finally, as an application of the test of social preferences, we first investigate the relationship between trust and cooperation from an individual micro-perspective view using a set of experimental data. We use two methods of trust game and GSS surveys to measure an individual's level of trust and use the amount of investment in public goods game as a variable level of cooperation. We found that the level of trust using the two measurement methods are inherent consistent, that is, whenever we control for altruism, we found that most attitudinal questions in GSS are good predictors of trusting actions. Meanwhile after dealing endogeneity of the individual's trust measured from trust game and cooperative variable using IV, and control the individual differences and subject's altruism and risk preferences, We found that the trust level measured from the experiment is significantly positively correlated with cooperation, while the trust measured from questionnaire is not significant correlated with cooperation. Our results indicate that the hypothesis of trust could promote the level of cooperation is dependent on the specific measurement of trust.