社会信息、建议与弱势儿童的利他行为：来自哥伦比亚的实验证据

中文摘要

我们开展了一项实地实验室实验，考察父母、教师和同伴的行为与建议如何影响哥伦比亚弱势社区儿童的利他行为。小学生在了解父母、教师或同伴的决策前后，或在接受他们的建议前后，分别在一项真实努力任务中选择向一名需要帮助的儿童提供多少帮助。我们发现，来自这些来源的信息和建议均增强了儿童的分享意愿。儿童在观察他人的决策后会增加分享，但获取父母行为信息需要付出成本的情况除外。然而，当儿童必须付出少量成本才能观察他人行为时，他们的分享对教师和同伴行为的反应比对父母行为的反应大得多。相比之下，来自所有来源——父母、教师、同伴和高地位同伴——的建议均促进了分享。我们的发现凸显了儿童社会环境的关键作用，并揭示了促进弱势儿童利他行为的多种具有政策意义的渠道。 • 父母、教师和同伴的行为或建议对贫困儿童利他行为的影响 • 各来源的建议对儿童利他行为的影响均为正向 • 信息的影响取决于其来源和获取成本 • 来自父母、教师和同伴的干预效果相当

Abstract

We conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment to investigate how parents’, teachers’, and peers’ behavior and advice affect children’s altruism in disadvantaged neighborhoods in Colombia. Elementary school children choose how much to help a child-in-need in a real-effort task before and after learning about their parents’, teachers’, or peers’ decisions or receiving their advice. We find that both information and advice from these sources enhance children’s willingness to share. Their sharing increases after observing others’ decisions, except when it is costly to access information about parents’ behavior. However, when children must incur a small cost to observe others’ behavior, their sharing responds substantially more to their teachers’ and peers’ behavior than to their parents’. By contrast, advice from all sources—parents, teachers, peers, and high-status peers—consistently enhances sharing. Our findings highlight the crucial role of children’s social environments and shed light on multiple policy-relevant channels for fostering altruism among underprivileged children. • Impact of parents’, teachers’, and peers’ behavior or advice on poor kids’ altruism • The impact of advice on children’s altruism is positive for all sources • The impact of information depends on its source and cost • Interventions from parents, teachers, and peers are comparable in effectiveness