自利行为新探

理论与现实中存在着将自私、自利、利他行为不同程度的混同现象,尤其是没有正确认识自利行为;自利的实际内容在不同的社会发展阶段是变化的,合理、正当的自利要求只能依据具体社会制度、法律、道德规范加以规定并据以判断;没有人的自利意识就不会有人的自私、利他观念,没有人的自利要求也不会产生自私、利他行为;不论就个体还是就社会总体来看,人的自利行为是最普遍的行为。     

When Pretence can be Beneficial

The paper examines when unilateral and bilateral pretence may be beneficial distinguishing between positive and negative externalities. Using a two-player single period game and defining altruism, selfishness and meanness as "sentimental continuity" it is shown how the optimal level of the pretended sentimentality is determined. The novelty of the model is that the optimal degree of altruism (meanness) depends on the extent of the positive (negative) externalities.     

利他主义与家族式中小企业管理模式研究

文章首先提出在家庭成员之间广泛存在的利他主义具有方向性、阶段性特征,并对这些特征的含义进行详细分析。在此基础上刻画了利他主义行为的有效性、家庭生产能力和家庭规模三者之间的关系,以及这种关系和利他主义行为特征对我国家族企业管理模式演变的影响,并根据利他主义的变动提出相应的家族企业管理模式。     

Conflict and parochialism among combatants and civilians: Evidence from Ukraine

How does conflict affect prosocial and parochial preferences within a society? Our research considers the case of recent violence in Donbas, Ukraine where ethnic Russian separatists are battling the Ukrainian military. To evaluate social preferences, we utilize a non-costly dictator game with ethnic treatments among young ethnic Ukrainian male combatants and noncombatants in the eastern city of Kharkiv, which borders the Donbas region. At the onset of violence, we find no differences in how these men treat ethnic Russians in their local community compared to their own in-group. However, after a year of intense fighting with separatists in the nearby Donbas region, we find evidence of the erosion of fairness preferences and increased bias against ethnic Russians, especially among noncombatant civilians, underscoring how parochial responses to violence may extend beyond direct combat exposure mechanisms. Our results point to the short-term destabilizing effects of conflict on prosocial preferences with potential long-term consequences for entrenching parochial divisions.     

Can willingness to pay capture the value of altruism? An exploration of Sen’s notion of commitment

Amartya Sen’s distinction between sympathy and commitment is used to examine the assertion that willingness to pay (WTP) can capture the value of altruism in health care. Willingness to pay values for a vaccination program stated to benefit only one’s self in the first instance and only other people in the second instance were elicited from a small convenience sample. Qualitative methods were then used to explore the meaning of the responses. Commitment was found to be a motivating factor and drove a wedge between willingness to pay and valuation of the program. The consequences of this for health economic research are discussed.     

Happiness functions with preference interdependence and heterogeneity: the case of altruism within the family

This study investigates the prevalence and extent of altruism by examining the relationship between parents’ and their adult children’s subjective well-being in a data set extracted from the German Socio-Economic Panel. To segregate the share of parents with altruistic preferences from those who are selfish, we estimate a finite mixture regression model. We control for various sources of potential bias by taking advantage of the data’s panel structure. To validate our modeling approach, we show that predicted altruists indeed make higher average transfer payments.      

Motivational crowding out effects in charitable giving: Experimental evidence

This paper tests motivational crowding out in the domain of charitable giving. A novelty is that our experiment isolates alternative explanations for the decline of giving, such as strategic considerations of decision-makers. Moreover, preference elicitation allows us to focus on the reaction of donors characterized by different degrees of intrinsic motivation. In the charitable-giving setting subjects donate money to the German “Red Cross” in two consecutive donations. The first dictator game is modified, i.e., donors face with equal probability an ex post reimbursement or a subsequent payment. The second game is a standard dictator game. We find that after an ex post change in the price of giving of the first donation, substantially more donors with a high degree of intrinsic motivation decrease donations than subjects with a low degree of intrinsic motivation and donors who did not experience a price effect. In a replication study we find support for these results for subjects who have previously participated in at least one economic experiment.     

Exploring customers’ situational and word-of-mouth motivations in corporate misconduct

The purpose of this study was to understand customers’ motivations in engaging in information forwarding and negative word-of-mouth behaviors in light of alleged corporate misconduct. To do so, an online survey was conducted in Singapore using alleged workplace gender discrimination as the corporate misconduct (N = 461). Situational motivation in problem solving was found not only to predict customers’ issue-specific information forwarding behaviors, but also to predict their word-of-mouth motivations. However, only four of the tested WOM motivations were found to influence negative WOM, and outrage was found neither to impact WOM motivations nor behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications of this study are discussed.     

Group egoism; investigating collective action and individual rationality

The paper discusses rationality at two levels. According to a common opinion the key to rationality at the group level is a willingness to contribute unselfishly at the individual level. I claim that even when rationality at the individual level is denied, it is often achieved by social punishment. The difficulty to organize a social project is exaggerated. The relative ease of implementing individual rationality has the disadvantage of frequently establishing and maintaining social order that, despite some enthusiastic proponents, fails to deliver rationality at the group level.     

Volunteerism Among Social Work Students During Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

Abstract

This study examined volunteer activities and predictors of volunteerism among graduate and undergraduate social work students (N = 416) from four universities in the Gulf Coast area following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The convenience sample drawn from all social work students at these universities included 89% females, and 52% of the students were in a master's level program. Sixty-one percent of the respondents were African American and 31% were non-Hispanic white. The majority of students volunteered (97%) despite experiencing a range of hurricane-related stressors. Multivariate analyses yielded a regression model that best predicted heightened volunteerism, which included age, school site, previous volunteer experience, hurricane-related stressors, altruism, and increased commitment to social work values (R ² = .35). The strongest predictors of volunteerism were stressor, increased commitment to social work values, and altruism (betas = .30, .26, and .21 respectively). The findings are consistent with previous research on volunteering in times of disaster and with current thinking about posttraumatic growth .