ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Leadership in Public Good Games and Private Information on Own Social Value Orientation
Edward Cartwright,
Yidan Chai,
Lian Xue,
Edward Cartwright
School of Accounting, Finance and Economics, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Search for more papers by this authorYidan Chai
School of Civil Aviation Transportation, Shanghai Civil Aviation College, Shanghai, China
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Lian Xue
Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Correspondence: Lian Xue ([email protected])
Search for more papers by this authorEdward Cartwright,
Yidan Chai,
Lian Xue,
Edward Cartwright
School of Accounting, Finance and Economics, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Search for more papers by this authorYidan Chai
School of Civil Aviation Transportation, Shanghai Civil Aviation College, Shanghai, China
Search for more papers by this authorCorresponding Author
Lian Xue
Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
Correspondence: Lian Xue ([email protected])
Search for more papers by this authorEdward Cartwright, Yidan Chai, and Lian Xue contributed equally.
First published: 14 April 2025
ABSTRACT
We explore whether information on one's own social value orientation (SVO) impacts contributions in a public good game with leadership by example. In doing so, we compare the predictions of a model of belief-based preferences, where payoffs depend on first- and second-order beliefs on the contributions of others, and a model of internalized descriptive norms, where payoffs depend on deviation from an empirical norm. We argue that if pro-social behavior is driven by belief-based preferences, then private information on SVO should not impact contributions, but if the behavior is driven by internalized descriptive norms, then information on its own SVO should impact contributions. We report an experiment with three treatments: no information on SVO, binary information whether pro-self or pro-social, and SVO indicated on a scale from very pro-social to very pro-self. We observe no effect of information on contributions. This finding is inconsistent with internalized descriptive norms. We find that contributions are highest with a pro-social leader.
Open Research
Data Availability Statement
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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