IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unm/umagsb/2016024.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Social Identity and Group Contests

Author

Listed:
  • Zaunbrecher, Henrik

    (Microeconomics & Public Economics, RS: GSBE ETBC)

  • Riedl, Arno

    (Microeconomics & Public Economics, RS: GSBE ETBC)

Abstract

Social identity has been shown to successfully enhance cooperation and effort in cooperation and coordination games. Little is known about the causal effect of social identity on the propensity to engage in group conflict. In this paper we explore theoretically and experimentally whether social identity increases investments in group contests. We show theoretically that increased social identity with the own group implies higher investments in Tullock contests. Empirically we find that induced social identity does increase group closeness but does not increase conflict investments.

Suggested Citation

  • Zaunbrecher, Henrik & Riedl, Arno, 2016. "Social Identity and Group Contests," Research Memorandum 024, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
  • Handle: RePEc:unm:umagsb:2016024
    DOI: 10.26481/umagsb.2016024
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/ws/files/3454454/RM16024.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.26481/umagsb.2016024?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 2002. "Understanding Social Preferences with Simple Tests," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 117(3), pages 817-869.
    2. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts & Benedikt Herrmann & Henrik Orzen, 2010. "Intergroup Conflict and Intra-group Punishment in an Experimental Contest Game," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 420-447, March.
    3. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    4. Arthur A. Stein, 1976. "Conflict and Cohesion," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 20(1), pages 143-172, March.
    5. Konrad, Kai A., 2009. "Strategy and Dynamics in Contests," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199549603.
    6. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE 2.0 - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Working Paper Series in Economics 10, University of Cologne, Department of Economics.
    7. Robin Cubitt & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 1998. "On the Validity of the Random Lottery Incentive System," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(2), pages 115-131, September.
    8. Ben Greiner, 2004. "The Online Recruitment System ORSEE - A Guide for the Organization of Experiments in Economics," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2003-10, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    9. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    10. Ahn, T.K. & Isaac, R. Mark & Salmon, Timothy C., 2011. "Rent seeking in groups," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 116-125, January.
    11. Eckel, Catherine C. & Grossman, Philip J., 2005. "Managing diversity by creating team identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 371-392, November.
    12. Roy Chen & Yan Chen, 2011. "The Potential of Social Identity for Equilibrium Selection," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2562-2589, October.
    13. Yaron Azrieli & Christopher P. Chambers & Paul J. Healy, 2018. "Incentives in Experiments: A Theoretical Analysis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(4), pages 1472-1503.
    14. Yan Chen & Sherry Xin Li, 2009. "Group Identity and Social Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 431-457, March.
    15. Johannes Kaiser, 2007. "An exact and a Monte Carlo proposal to the Fisher–Pitman permutation tests for paired replicates and for independent samples," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 7(3), pages 402-412, September.
    16. Bicskei, Marianna & Lankau, Matthias & Bizer, Kilian, 2016. "Negative reciprocity and its relation to anger-like emotions in identity-homogeneous and -heterogeneous groups," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 17-34.
    17. Abbink, Klaus & Brandts, Jordi & Herrmann, Benedikt & Orzen, Henrik, 2012. "Parochial altruism in inter-group conflicts," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 45-48.
    18. Katz, Eliakim & Nitzan, Shmuel & Rosenberg, Jacob, 1990. "Rent-Seeking for Pure Public Goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 65(1), pages 49-60, April.
    19. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    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. Martin Kolmar & Andreas Wagener, 2019. "Group Identities in Conflicts," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 165-192, December.

    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. Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Jeon, Joo Young & Ramalingam, Abhijit, 2016. "Identity and group conflict," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 107-121.
    2. Horstmann, Elaine & Blankenberg, Ann-Kathrin & Schneider, Tim, 2017. "Cooperation in public goods games: Enhancing effects of group identity and competition," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 324, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.
    3. Herbst, Luisa & Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2015. "Endogenous group formation in experimental contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 163-189.
    4. Gerald Eisenkopf, 2013. "The Impact of Management Incentives in Intergroup Contests," TWI Research Paper Series 87, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.
    5. Eisenkopf, Gerald, 2014. "The impact of management incentives in intergroup contests," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 42-61.
    6. Eisenkopf, Gerald, 2013. "Management Impact in an Experimental Intergroup Contest," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79863, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Gerald Eisenkopf, 2013. "The Impact of Management Incentives in Intergroup Contests," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2013-26, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    8. Florian Heine & Martin Sefton, 2018. "To Tender or Not to Tender? Deliberate and Exogenous Sunk Costs in a Public Good Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-28, June.
    9. Ke, Changxia & Konrad, Kai A. & Morath, Florian, 2013. "Brothers in arms – An experiment on the alliance puzzle," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 61-76.
    10. Changxia Ke & Kai A. Konrad & Florian Morath, 2015. "Alliances In The Shadow Of Conflict," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(2), pages 854-871, April.
    11. Martin Kolmar & Andreas Wagener, 2019. "Group Identities in Conflicts," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 165-192, December.
    12. Beekman, Gonne & Cheung, Stephen L. & Levely, Ian, 2017. "The effect of conflict history on cooperation within and between groups: Evidence from a laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 168-183.
    13. Roman M. Sheremeta, 2018. "Behavior In Group Contests: A Review Of Experimental Research," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(3), pages 683-704, July.
    14. Changxia Ke, 2011. "Fight Alone or Together? The Need to Belong," Working Papers fight_alone_or_together, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    15. Merve İntişah & Mürüvvet Büyükboyacı, 2024. "The role of noise variance on effort in group contests," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 97(2), pages 311-346, September.
    16. Florian Heine & Martin Strobel, 2020. "Reward and punishment in a team contest," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(9), pages 1-25, September.
    17. Surajeet Chakravarty & Miguel A Fonseca & Sudeep Ghosh & Sugata Marjit, 2016. "Religious Fragmentation, Social Identity and Conflict: Evidence from an Artefactual Field Experiment in India," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(10), pages 1-17, October.
    18. Cornaglia, Francesca & Drouvelis, Michalis & Masella, Paolo, 2019. "Competition and the role of group identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 136-145.
    19. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    20. Bhaumik, Sumon K. & Chowdhury, Subhasish M. & Dimova, Ralitza & Fromell, Hanna, 2023. "Identity, Communication, and Conflict: An Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 16020, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:unm:umagsb:2016024. 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: Andrea Willems or Leonne Portz (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/meteonl.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.