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Category Archives: D64

Religious Identity and Climate-Sustainable Behavior

by Zixin “Finnie” Zhao

Abstract

What motivates individual action on climate change? The study focuses on the potential influence of religious identities. It employs a laboratory experiment to investigate how priming religious identity affects individuals’ donation behaviors to climate versus non-climate charities in a dictator game setting. In contrast with expectations, this study finds no significant evidence that an increase in religious identity salience influences religious individuals’ donation to climate, nor does it affect overall charitable donation behaviors, when demographic factors and perceptions about charity are controlled. Although failing to establish a causal relationship between religious identity and climate sustainable behavior or a linkage between religious identity and pro-social behavior, this research marks an innovative attempt to use experimental economics methodology to study factors that shape individual responses to the global climate challenge.

Professor Rachel Kranton, Faculty Advisor
Professor Michelle Connolly, Faculty Advisor

JEL Codes: C91; D64; Q54; Z12

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Economic Situations and Social Distance: Taxation and Donation

by Alexander Brandt

Abstract:

This experimental study evaluated the effects of two common economic situations –
taxation and donation – on the social distance between participants in the situations, an original
effect of interest that is the opposite of prior research. This study employed a novel survey
framework, in which subjects gave money to others in the economic situations and socially
judged recipients of their money. Findings mostly did not support predictions that the economic
situations would differently affect social distance, but the novel framework enabled an effective
test of the effect of economic situations on social distance and is a major contribution to the field.

Professor Rachel E. Kranton, Faculty Advisor
Professor Scott A. Huettel, Faculty Advisor
Professor Grace Kim, Seminar Advisor

JEL Codes: C91; D64; D89; D90

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Are the Chinese Altruistic? Explaining Motives behind Chinese Intergenerational Transfers using the Strategic Bequest Motive

By Lucy Yin

Two main competing theories regarding intergenerational transfers from adult children to elderly parents exist: the altruism model and the exchange model. The strategic bequest motive supports the exchange model in claiming parents with bequeathable wealth will incentivize children to devote more resources to parents in order to receive a larger bequest. I use data from the Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey to assess whether children increase monetary or time transfers to elderly parents with bequeathable property ownership. My findings suggest an altruistic model at play, which contradicts most findings in East Asian countries but may be a trend found in other developing countries.

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Advisor: Frank Sloan, Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: D14, D64 | Tagged: Bequests, Altruism, Intergenerational Transfers

Questions?

Undergraduate Program Assistant
Matthew Eggleston
dus_asst@econ.duke.edu

Director of the Honors Program
Michelle P. Connolly
michelle.connolly@duke.edu