Social Image, Observer Identity, and Crowding Up

Abstract

People behave more pro-socially when watched by others. Despite the abundance of theoretical and empirical research on social-image concerns, previous studies did not consider the observer’s identity. To fill this gap, we develop a theoretical model incorporating social distance between the agent and the observer, and test the predictions of the model in a field experiment. 670 high-school students walked to generate donations for a public good. Participants were either unobserved, observed by a friend, or observed by an acquaintance. We also manipulated whether effort up to a certain threshold yielded a personal reward. Our results show that: (1) observability induces volunteers to exert more efforts, (2) crowding up: a personal reward up to a threshold increases the share of volunteers what exert effort strictly above the threshold when the efforts are observed, and (3) among young adolescents, both effects are stronger when the observer is an acquaintance (rather than a friend).

Keywords: Social distance, field experiment, crowding up, prosocial behavior

JEL Classification: C93,D64