IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v108y2018p143-47.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Is Altruism Sensitive to Scope? The Role of Tangibility

Author

Listed:
  • Alex Imas
  • George Loewenstein

Abstract

Prior work has shown that people appear insensitive to the scope of their altruistic acts and prosocial behavior. While they respond positively when their choices lead to increasing rewards for themselves, people do not change their behavior when the outcomes for others increase. We demonstrate that the scope sensitivity of altruism depends critically on its tangibility, and suggest that this relationship operates through mental accounting. We show that by increasing the level of tangibility, people can become just as sensitive to changes in the size of rewards for others as if they were earning the rewards themselves.

Suggested Citation

  • Alex Imas & George Loewenstein, 2018. "Is Altruism Sensitive to Scope? The Role of Tangibility," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 143-147, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:143-47
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20181094
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20181094
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=4KYFj5RkihGCb2CU7-w8HpEZ-hk923DW
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=n8ym8OIKUraoxsEL2nx7fA8iEJAP_-AE
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gauriot, Romain & Heger, Stephanie A. & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Altruism or diminishing marginal utility?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 24-48.
    2. Córdova, Angélica & Imas, Alex & Schwartz, Daniel, 2021. "Are non-contingent incentives more effective in motivating new behavior? Evidence from the field," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 602-615.
    3. Wubeshet Regasa & Umberto Galmarini & Giuseppe Porro, 2024. "Victim’s identification and social categorization: first- and second-order effects on altruistic behavior," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 71(4), pages 959-988, December.
    4. Sara M. Constantino & Silvia Pianta & Adrian Rinscheid & Renato Frey & Elke U. Weber, 2021. "The source is the message: the impact of institutional signals on climate change–related norm perceptions and behaviors," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 166(3), pages 1-20, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:143-47. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.