IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/nbr/nberch/13253.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Confucianism and Preferences: Evidence from Lab Experiments in Taiwan and China

In: Economics of Religion and Culture

Author

Listed:
  • Elaine M. Liu
  • Juanjuan Meng
  • Joseph Tao-yi Wang

Abstract

This paper investigates how Confucianism affects individual decision making in Taiwan and in China. We found that Chinese subjects in our experiments became less accepting of Confucian values, such that they became significantly more risk loving, less loss averse, and more impatient after being primed with Confucianism, whereas Taiwanese subjects became significantly less present-based and were inclined to be more trustworthy after being primed by Confucianism. Combining the evidence from the incentivized laboratory experiments and subjective survey measures, we found evidence that Chinese subjects and Taiwanese subjects reacted differently to Confucianism.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Elaine M. Liu & Juanjuan Meng & Joseph Tao-yi Wang, 2013. "Confucianism and Preferences: Evidence from Lab Experiments in Taiwan and China," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Religion and Culture, pages 106-122, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberch:13253
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen Knack & Philip Keefer, 1997. "Does Social Capital Have an Economic Payoff? A Cross-Country Investigation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1251-1288.
    2. Ming-Yih Liang, 2010. "Confucianism and the East Asian Miracle," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(3), pages 206-234, July.
    3. Xavier Giné & Jessica Goldberg & Dan Silverman & Dean Yang, 2018. "Revising Commitments: Field Evidence on the Adjustment of Prior Choices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 159-188, February.
    4. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano & Nathan Nunn, 2013. "On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(2), pages 469-530.
    5. La Porta, Rafael, et al, 1997. "Trust in Large Organizations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 333-338, May.
    6. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Gerard Roland, 2017. "Culture, Institutions, and the Wealth of Nations," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 99(3), pages 402-416, July.
    7. Elaine Liu & Paul Frijters & Tao Sherry Kong, 2013. "Who is Coming to the Experiment? A Cautionary Tale from China," Working Papers 201309854, Department of Economics, University of Houston.
    8. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    9. Po Ip, 2009. "Is Confucianism Good for Business Ethics in China?," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 88(3), pages 463-476, September.
    10. James Andreoni & Michael A. Kuhn & Charles Sprenger, 2013. "On Measuring Time Preferences," NBER Working Papers 19392, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Daniel J. Benjamin & James J. Choi & A. Joshua Strickland, 2010. "Social Identity and Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1913-1928, September.
    12. Abigail Barr & Garance Genicot, 2008. "Risk Sharing, Commitment, and Information: An Experimental Analysis," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 6(6), pages 1151-1185, December.
    13. Quang Nguyen & Colin Camerer & Tomomi Tanaka, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences Linking Experimental and Household Data from Vietnam," Post-Print halshs-00547090, HAL.
    14. Luigi Guiso & Paola Sapienza & Luigi Zingales, 2006. "Does Culture Affect Economic Outcomes?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 20(2), pages 23-48, Spring.
    15. James Andreoni & Charles Sprenger, 2012. "Estimating Time Preferences from Convex Budgets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3333-3356, December.
    16. David Laibson, 1997. "Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(2), pages 443-478.
    17. Berg Joyce & Dickhaut John & McCabe Kevin, 1995. "Trust, Reciprocity, and Social History," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 122-142, July.
    18. Afridi, Farzana & Li, Sherry Xin & Ren, Yufei, 2015. "Social identity and inequality: The impact of China's hukou system," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 17-29.
    19. Elaine M. Liu, 2013. "Time to Change What to Sow: Risk Preferences and Technology Adoption Decisions of Cotton Farmers in China," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(4), pages 1386-1403, October.
    20. Nathan Nunn & Leonard Wantchekon, 2011. "The Slave Trade and the Origins of Mistrust in Africa," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(7), pages 3221-3252, December.
    21. Tomomi Tanaka & Colin F. Camerer & Quang Nguyen, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 557-571, March.
    22. S. Christian Wheeler & Jonah Berger, 2007. "When the Same Prime Leads to Different Effects," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 34(3), pages 357-368, July.
    23. Koehn, Daryl, 2001. "Confucian Trustworthiness and the Practice of Business in China," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 11(3), pages 415-429, July.
    24. Buchan, Nancy R. & Johnson, Eric J. & Croson, Rachel T.A., 2006. "Let's get personal: An international examination of the influence of communication, culture and social distance on other regarding preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(3), pages 373-398, July.
    25. Quey-Jen Yeh & Xiaojun Xu, 2010. "The Effect of Confucian Work Ethics on Learning About Science and Technology Knowledge and Morality," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 95(1), pages 111-128, August.
    26. Carvalho, Leandro S. & Prina, Silvia & Sydnor, Justin, 2016. "The effect of saving on risk attitudes and intertemporal choices," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 41-52.
    27. Steffen Andersen & Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2008. "Lost In State Space: Are Preferences Stable?," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1091-1112, August.
    28. Yan Chen & Sherry Xin Li, 2009. "Group Identity and Social Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 431-457, March.
    29. Shaw, Kathryn L, 1996. "An Empirical Analysis of Risk Aversion and Income Growth," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 14(4), pages 626-653, October.
    30. Ornatowski, Gregory K., 1996. "Confucian ethics and economic development: A study of the adaptation of Confucian values to modern Japanese economic ideology and institutions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 571-590.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Taisuke Imai & Tom A Rutter & Colin F Camerer, 2021. "Meta-Analysis of Present-Bias Estimation using Convex Time Budgets," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(636), pages 1788-1814.
    2. Fang, Guanfu & Gao, Tiantian & He, Huanlang & Sun, Qian, 2023. "Public credit information arrangements and entrepreneurship: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    3. Kirk, H., 2019. "Cooperation and Creed: An Experimental Study of Religious Affiliation in Strategic and Societal Interactions," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1995, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    4. David Oliver Kasdan, 2020. "Do Koreans like being nudged? Survey evidence for the contextuality of behavioral public policy," Rationality and Society, , vol. 32(3), pages 313-333, August.
    5. Wang, Shun & Zhou, Weina, 2017. "Family structure and home ownership: Evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 165-179.
    6. Hao, Jing & Wang, Ziqiao & Zhang, Xiaotao & He, Feng & Chen, Xuehong, 2024. "Culture imprint and gambling preference: Evidence from individual investors' trading in the Chinese stock market," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    7. Jiang, Shuguang & Wei, Qian, 2022. "Confucian culture, moral reminder, and soft corruption," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    8. Lin, Wanchuan & Liu, Yiming & Meng, Juanjuan, 2014. "The crowding-out effect of formal insurance on informal risk sharing: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 184-211.
    9. Alison Booth & Elliott Fan & Xin Meng & Dandan Zhang, 2019. "Gender Differences in Willingness to Compete: The Role of Culture and Institutions," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(618), pages 734-764.
    10. Jian Yang & Chaohua Dong & Yongjin Chen, 2021. "Government’s Economic Performance Fosters Trust in Government in China: Assessing the Moderating Effect of Respect for Authority," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 154(2), pages 545-558, April.
    11. Rui He & Jianjun Jin & Foyuan Kuang & Chenyang Zhang & Tong Guan, 2019. "Farmers’ Risk Cognition, Risk Preferences and Climate Change Adaptive Behavior: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-13, December.
    12. Lin, Hsuan-Chih & Tanaka, Atsuko & Wu, Po-Shyan, 2021. "Shifting from pay-as-you-go to individual retirement accounts: A path to a sustainable pension system," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    13. Li, Sherry Xin & de Oliveira, Angela C.M. & Eckel, Catherine, 2017. "Common identity and the voluntary provision of public goods: An experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 32-46.
    14. Yongbo Ge & Xiaoran Kong & Geilegeilao Dadilabang & Kung‐Cheng Ho, 2023. "The effect of Confucian culture on household risky asset holdings: Using categorical principal component analysis," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(1), pages 839-857, January.
    15. Huynh, Toan L.D. & Rieger, Marc Oliver & Wang, Mei, 2022. "Cross-country comparison in dishonest behaviour: Germany and East Asian countries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 215(C).
    16. James Andreoni & Charles Sprenger, 2015. "Risk Preferences Are Not Time Preferences: Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(7), pages 2287-2293, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Liu, Elaine M. & Meng, Juanjuan & Wang, Joseph Tao-yi, 2014. "Confucianism and preferences: Evidence from lab experiments in Taiwan and China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 106-122.
    2. Sophie Clot & Charlotte Y. Stanton & Marc Willinger, 2017. "Are impatient farmers more risk-averse? Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in rural Uganda," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(2), pages 156-169, January.
    3. Luo, Jun & Wang, Xinxin, 2020. "Hukou identity and trust—Evidence from a framed field experiment in China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    4. Cassar, Alessandra & Healy, Andrew & von Kessler, Carl, 2017. "Trust, Risk, and Time Preferences After a Natural Disaster: Experimental Evidence from Thailand," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 90-105.
    5. Walker, Sarah, 2020. "Historical legacies in savings: Evidence from Romania," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 76-99.
    6. Tristan Le Cotty & Elodie Maître d’Hôtel & Raphael Soubeyran & Julie Subervie, 2018. "Linking Risk Aversion, Time Preference and Fertiliser Use in Burkina Faso," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(11), pages 1991-2006, November.
    7. Delavande, Adeline & Zafar, Basit, 2015. "Stereotypes and Madrassas: Experimental evidence from Pakistan," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 247-267.
    8. Lata Gangadharan & Tarun Jain & Pushkar Maitra & Joe Vecci, 2022. "Lab-in-the-field experiments: perspectives from research on gender," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 73(1), pages 31-59, January.
    9. Melanie Lührmann & Marta Serra-Garcia & Joachim Winter, 2018. "The Impact of Financial Education on Adolescents' Intertemporal Choices," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 309-332, August.
    10. Chaudhary, Latika & Rubin, Jared & Iyer, Sriya & Shrivastava, Anand, 2020. "Culture and colonial legacy: Evidence from public goods games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 107-129.
    11. Ubfal, Diego, 2016. "How general are time preferences? Eliciting good-specific discount rates," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 150-170.
    12. Meier, Stephan & Pierce, Lamar & Vaccaro, Antonino & La Cara, Barbara, 2016. "Trust and in-group favoritism in a culture of crime," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 132(PA), pages 78-92.
    13. Pushkar Maitra & Ananta Neelim, 2021. "Behavioural characteristics, stability of preferences and entrepreneurial success," Chapters, in: Ananish Chaudhuri (ed.), A Research Agenda for Experimental Economics, chapter 5, pages 93-118, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    14. Armin Falk & Anke Becker & Thomas Dohmen & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2023. "The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 1935-1950, April.
    15. Ho, Hoang-Anh & Martinsson, Peter & Olsson, Ola, 2017. "The Origins of Cultural Divergence: Evidence from a Developing Country," Working Papers in Economics 714, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised Jun 2018.
    16. Karaja, Elira & Rubin, Jared, 2022. "Θ The cultural transmission of trust norms: Evidence from a lab in the field on a natural experiment," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(1), pages 1-19.
    17. Jindrich Matousek & Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova, 2022. "Individual discount rates: a meta-analysis of experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 318-358, February.
    18. Jonathan Chapman & Erik Snowberg & Stephanie Wang & Colin Camerer, 2018. "Loss Attitudes in the U.S. Population: Evidence from Dynamically Optimized Sequential Experimentation (DOSE)," NBER Working Papers 25072, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Schleich, Joachim & Gassmann, Xavier & Faure, Corinne & Meissner, Thomas, 2016. "Making the implicit explicit: A look inside the implicit discount rate," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 321-331.
    20. Irena Grosfeld & Alexander Rodnyansky & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2010. "Persistent anti-market culture: A legacy of the Pale of Settlement and of the Holocaust," Working Papers w0145, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General

    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:nbr:nberch:13253. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.