出版社:Suntory Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines
摘要:We develop a dynamic model where people decide in the presence of moral constraintsand test the predictions of the model through two experiments. Norm violations inducea temporal feeling of guilt that depreciates with time. Due to such .uctuations of guilt,people exhibit an endogenous temporal inconsistency in social preferences—a behaviorwe term conscience accounting. In our experiments people first have to make an ethicaldecision, and subsequently decide whether to donate to charity. We find that those whochose unethically were more likely to donate than those who did not. As predicted, donationrates were higher when the opportunity to donate came sooner after the unethical choicethan later. Combined, our theoretical and empirical findings suggest a mechanism by whichprosocial behavior is likely to occur within temporal brackets following an unethical choice