What Motivates Costless Altruism? Evidence from Laboratory Experiments

摘要

Costless altruistic behaviors are special altruisticbehaviors that benefit others at no own cost. While in literature, themotivations of typical altruistic behaviors that generally involve own costhave been studied intensively, it is not clear yet, on the flip side, whatmotivations drive costless altruistic behaviors. In this paper, we examine howoften costless altruistic behaviors happen and, if not always, the potentialdeterminants of costless altruistic behaviors. Specifically, we conduct aseries of human-computer experiments of repeated emotion game, separating theimpacts of emotion and payoff on the occurrence of costless altruisticbehaviors. We find that costless altruistic behaviors do not always happen, andthe considerations regarding emotion (e.g., reciprocity) and self-payoff aretwo important determinants. Additionally, we find that rewarding altruisticbehaviors and punishing unaltruistic behaviors lead to more costless altruisticbehaviors, thus, can potentially promote the overall social welfare.