TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bó,Ernesto Dal
AU  - Bó,Pedro Dal
TI  - "Do the Right Thing:" The Effects of Moral Suasion on Cooperation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 15559
PY  - 2009
Y2  - December 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15559
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w15559.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ernesto Dal Bó
University of California, Berkeley
Haas School of Business
545 Student Services Building #1900
Berkeley, CA 94720-1900
Tel: 510 643 1606
E-Mail: dalbo@haas.berkeley.edu

Pedro Dal Bó
Department of Economics
Brown University
64 Waterman Street
Providence, RI 02912
Tel: 401/863-2953
E-Mail: pdalbo@brown.edu
AB  - The use of moral appeals to affect the behavior of others is pervasive (from the pulpit to ethics classes) but little is known about the effects of moral suasion on behavior. In a series of experiments we study whether moral suasion affects behavior in voluntary contribution games and mechanisms by which behavior is altered. We find that observing a message with a moral standard according to the golden rule or, alternatively, utilitarian philosophy, results in a significant but transitory increase in contributions above the levels observed for subjects that did not receive a message or received a message that advised them to contribute without a moral rationale. When players have the option of punishing each other after the contribution stage the effect of the moral messages on contributions becomes persistent: punishments and moral messages interact to sustain cooperation. We investigate the mechanism through which moral suasion operates and find it to involve both expectation- and preference-shifting effects. These results suggest that the use of moral appeals can be an effective way of promoting cooperation.
ER  -