Which social categories matter to people: An experiment

ORCID Identifiers

0000-0003-2936-6287

Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Publication Date

1-1-2022

Abstract

Social categories matter to people, but it is not obvious ex ante which ones matter more. To explore this, we conduct a novel experimental market of anonymous partners based on social categories. Participants have the option of choosing or discarding a peer according to their gender, ethnicity, and religion. Our research design allows us to explore whether individuals prioritize social categories when selecting a peer and whether the order in which social categories are prioritized is context dependent. Considering both free and costly decisions, two economic contexts are evaluated: donations (dictator game) and investments (risk game). We find that when selecting a partner, gender appears to be the dominant social category across different conditions, with subjects exhibiting sharp preferences for being matched with a female partner. However, the partner's religion gains prominence as a requested social category when issues concerning social-group decision-making become relevant to one's own payoffs. Finally, we find that choosing social categories seems to have economic consequences both by increasing economic donations and increasing investments. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

ISSN

0167-2681

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

193

First Page

125

Last Page

145

Disciplines

Business

Keywords

Social categories, Gender, Religion, Ethnicity, Discrimination, Donation, Investment

Scopus ID

85122507076

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

no

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