Speaker
Description
This study investigates whether women place more or less importance on their social image of being socially responsible than men in a controlled lab-in-the-field experiment conducted in rural India. Participants in the experiment perform a simple task to generate a monetary endowment, donate a contribution from this earned endowment in private to an environmental NGO, and finally elicit their preferences for public recognition of their contributions through an incentive-compatible mechanism. The baseline treatment is that participants are not able to choose the amount to donate but are obliged to contribute the entire monetary endowment earned to the NGO. They are also asked to state their WTP for public recognition. The findings indicate that, compared to men, women are more generous and are also willing to pay more to remain anonymous. However, we do not find any difference in WTP for public recognition between men and women. The mix of similarity and diversity in women's voluntary contributions to public goods and their concerns for social image shows that understanding women's behaviour is crucial for designing cost-effective norm-based policies.
| Keyword | Environmental Economics and Sustainability |
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