115 research outputs found
Motivation crowding in environmental protection: Evidence from an artefactual field experiment
No full textThis paper examines how motivation, crowding and social image affect environmental conservation decisions. An artefactual field experiment conducted in Bolivia is used to reproduce the trade-off between individual and social benefits in natural resource use and test the effect of non-monetary and non-regulatory incentives on pro-social behavior for environmental conservation. The results show the presence of a social norm prescribing positive contribution towards environmental protection, and that external incentives have heterogeneous effects on pro-social behavior depending on how they influence reputation and self-image. The experimental results differ from those of analogous experiments conducted in the laboratory, and are instead consistent with those from field experiments on common-pool resource management. This fact suggests caution in generalizing conclusions, reached in the laboratory, to different settings and populations. © 2011 Elsevier B.V
Relative social status and conformism: Experimental evidence on local public good contributions
No full textThrough an artefactual field experiment conducted in Colombia, where participants make repeated contributions to a local natural conservation project, I test a novel way to identify high status individuals within a community, and show that status, so defined, is correlated with public good giving. Both absolute and relative status have a statistically significant and economically relevant influence on behavior. In particular, the same individual, when matched with a lower status partner, donates more and conforms less to the partner's action. The results indicate that contributions to local public goods can be enhanced by interventions that make relative status more salient
Social Preferences and Environmental Quality: Evidence from School Children in Sierra Leone
No full textThis article examines the effect of exogenous health shocks in utero and in infancy on the development of social preferences later in childhood. We use data from binary-choice dictator games run with school children in rural Sierra Leone to measure aversion to inequality, altruism and spite towards peers within and outside one's social group. We exploit shocks in the level of rainfall in the place and year of children's birth as sources of variation in the environment at the time children are born. We find that being born into an environment with higher rainfall, which is associated with worse health outcomes, lowers the probability that a child will demonstrate a propensity to maximise her own material pay-off. We show that rainfall shocks are linked to children's height-for-age and suggest that they influence preferences through their effect on children's health. Whether the relationship is a direct one from health to physical and cognitive development, or an indirect one through parents' socialisation, our results suggest that preferences are shaped by features of the physical environment in which individuals are born
Fostering collective action: three artefactual experiments on local public good provision
No full textDeterminants of conservation among the rural poor: A charitable contribution experiment
No full textThis paper examines how conservation decisions are affected by environmental degradation. Donations to an environmental NGO and participation in actual conservation activities capture individual preferences for environmental conservation. Environmental degradation is measured both through survey-based data on experiences of deforestation and environmental shocks, and through indices of deforestation constructed with GIS data. The results show that being exposed to environmental degradation is correlated both with higher donations and conservation behavior. The relationship between conservation choices and individual social preferences is also explored. Experimental measures of individual altruism and inequality aversion, and survey measures of trust, time preferences and civic engagement are correlated with donations and real world conservation decisions respectively. These findings show the role of environmental awareness in fostering environmental conservation even in very poor settings. They also highlight the potential of experiments, which closely mirror real world decisions, to generate conclusions generalizable to individual behavior outside the laboratory. © 2014
E-campaigning on Twitter: The effectiveness of distributive promises and negative campaign in the 2013 Italian election
No full textRecent studies investigated the effect of e-campaigning on the electoral performance. However, little attention has been paid to the content of e-campaigning. Given that political parties broadcast minute-by-minute the campaign messages on social media, this comprehensive and unmediated information can be useful to evaluate the impact of different electoral strategies. Accordingly, this article examines the electoral campaign for the 2013 Italian general election to assess the effectiveness of positive and negative campaigning messages, measured through content analysis of information published on the official Twitter accounts of Italian parties. We evaluate their impact on the share of unsolicited voting intentions expressed on Twitter, measured through an innovative technique of sentiment analysis. Our results show that negative campaign has positive effects and its impact is stronger when the attacker is meanwhile under attack. Conversely, we only find a circumstantial effect of positive campaign related to clientelistic and distributive appeals
Historical legacy and policy effectiveness: The long-term influence of preunification borders in Italy
No full textThis paper investigates the interplay between cultural traditions and policy effectiveness. It explores the differential impact of a large development program (Cassa per il Mezzogiorno), implemented for four decades, starting in the 1950s, to stimulate convergence between Italy's south and the more developed north, on municipalities with different histories. Namely, we consider a sample of municipalities located on either side of the historical border of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, whose legacy is considered, from Putnam onwards, to be a prime-facie cause of Southern Italy's underdevelopment. Having been part of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies is associated with a negative impact of development policies, but only when the allocation of development funds through the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno suffered from low quality of governance and was driven by political considerations rather than by efficiency ones
Unusual histologic finding in tissue obtained from voluntary pregnancy termination: a case report
No full textBACKGROUND: An unusual histologic finding in tissue obtained from voluntary
pregnancy termination (VPT) is reported to demonstrate the utility of pathologic
examination of this specimen.
METHODS: A 30-year-old woman with a history of depression was referred to the
gynecology clinic for VPT in the eighth week of gestation. Material obtained from
uterine cavity curettage was macroscopically and histologically examined. Based
on the histological findings, a molecular study by polymerase chain reaction
amplification (PCR) was performed to evaluate the presence of human papilloma
virus (HPV) DNA. For DNA extraction, 4-microm-thick histological sections were
stained with hematoxylin and examined under a stereomicroscope. The PCR
amplification was performed with the L1 consensus primers Gp5+/Gp6+, giving an
expected PCR product size of 150 bp: these primers have been developed to allow
the detection of a broad spectrum of mucosotropic HPV genotypes.
RESULTS: Histological examination of tissue obtained from the VPT showed immature
villi with post-abortive hydropic degeneration and the presence of a small
fragment of cervical mucosa with a squamous intraepithelial lesion characterized
by mild to moderate nuclear atypia (SIL). PCR revealed that this lesion was
related to HPV. Subsequently, the pap smear and cervical biopsy revealed a
high-risk squamous intraepithelial lesion due to high-risk HPV.
CONCLUSIONS: This report demonstrates that tissue obtained from VPT cannot be
considered normal "a priori" and that a histological study can be useful to
provide new information regarding a woman's gynecological health
Push, don't nudge: Behavioral spillovers and policy instruments
No full textPolicy interventions are generally evaluated for their direct effectiveness. Little is known about their ability to persist over time and spill across contexts. These latter aspects can reinforce or offset the direct impacts depending on the policy instrument choice. Through an online experiment with 1486 subjects, we compare four widely used policy instruments in terms of their ability to enforce a norm of fairness in the Dictator Game, and to persist over time (i.e., to a subsequent untreated Dictator Game) or spill over to a norm of cooperation (i.e., to a subsequent Prisoner's Dilemma). As specific policy interventions, we employed two instances of nudges: defaults and social information; and two instances of push measures: rebates and a minimum donation rule. Our results show that (i) rebates, the minimum donation rule and social information have a positive direct effect on fairness, although the effect of social information is only marginally significant, and that (ii) the effect of rebates and the minimum donation rule persists in the second game, but only within the same game type. These findings demonstrate that, within our specific design, push measures are more effective than nudges in promoting fairness
Norm elicitation in within-subject designs: testing for order effects
No full textWe investigate norms of corruption using the norm-elicitation procedure introduced by Krupka and Weber (2013). We use a within-subject design whereby the norms are elicited from the same subjects who are observed making choices in a bribery game. We test whether the order in which the norm-elicitation task and the bribery game are conducted affects elicited norms and behavior. We find little evidence of order effects in our experiment. We discuss how these results compare with those reported in the existing literature
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