Mechanisms of generalized exchange: Towards an integrated model
Citation: Wayne E. Baker, Sheen S. Levine (2010) Mechanisms of generalized exchange: Towards an integrated model.
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): Mechanisms of generalized exchange: Towards an integrated model
Download: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract id=1352101
Tagged: Sociology
(RSS) working paper (RSS)
Summary
- This is a summary of a working paper. This summary refers to the version written on July 1, 2010 and it may not reflect the latest draft of the published version of the paper.
Baker and Levine's paper attempts to build on the sociological literature on generalized exchange to offer an integrated framework for understanding the phenomenon. Their describe a model of generalized exchange that purposes four mechanisms:
- Fairness-based selected giving where people give to reward others who have been generous toward others and punish those that are not;
- Strategic-reputation building where users give in order to build their own reputation while minimizing investment;
- An obligation to "pay it forward" which is not driven by strategic considerations;
- Heterogeneous social preferences which reflect stable within-person differences.
Their argue that their primary contribution is this contingent model of generalize exchange helps integrate a number of mechanisms suggested in a broader set of relevant literatures. They also argue that the introduction of a heterogeneous social preferences is an important addition to previous work. Finally, they suggest that their work shows that general exchange is highly variable and is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon.
The authors test their theory using a set of social dilemma-type experiments with 160 participants (80 from Singapore and 80 from the US). They ran 10 sessions with 16 participants each and based their work on the "indirect helping game" which essentially gave each subject the ability to give some amount of points to another user and to have these points magnified when they were given. Users should choose to help others (at a cost to themselves) but would then be dependent on others to help them. The experimental settings allowed users to either see history or reputation from the last five games, or not.
The authors used a regression on the probability of a transfer and used a multi-level model to control for within-person variation around values. The overall transfer rate was 55% all five stated hypotheses were supported. Overall participants behaved in a way that was consistent with strategic reputation building. which was robust to the introduction of other control variables. Building a reputation for generosity seemed to pay off. Additionally people who benefited from transfers were more likely to "pay it forward." Finally, social preferences and values seemed to have an important effect on transfer rates.
