An experiment was conducted to determine the effectiveness of three invitation and incentive combinations in a web-based survey. A stratified convenience sample of 434 researchers who were target users of a collaboratory for earthquake engineering was randomly divided into three experimental conditions: (a) a $5 bill sent with the survey instructions via first class mail, (b) a $5 gift certific...

We study how a gift exchange labor market reacts to the occurrence of negative shocks. One-round shocks may hit either workers’ wages or employers’ earnings (via worker productivity). In our model, other-regarding preferences suffice predict and above competitive level. Wage rigidity is predicted if we add wage illusion loss aversion. Using real-effort laboratory experiment, find support for mo...

Gift giving is thought to be welfare decreasing. This claim rests on two key assumptions, namely, full information as to the whereabouts of all goods and the ability to reach the stores that contain desired goods costlessly. In this paper, we replace these two assumptions with the more realistic assumptions of uncertainty about the location of goods and search costs. In sharp contrast to existi...

Nine therapy clients were interviewed regarding their experiences of giving gifts to therapists. Data were analyzed using consensual qualitative research. In describing a specific event when they gave a gift that was accepted, participants described having a good relationship with the therapist and usually identified their therapy concerns as relationship or family struggles or both. Most bough...

What determines people’s moral judgments of selfish behaviors? Here we study whether people’s normative views in trust and gift exchange games, which underlie many situations of economic and social significance, are themselves functions of positive emotions. We used experimental survey methods to investigate people’s moral judgments empirically, and explored whether we could influence subsequen...