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Fairness norms, sanctioning power and social control at bonus payments in companies. A multi-level factorial survey study
Abstract
Experimental results on allocation situations show that giving behavior is strongly determined by sociological factors and driven by both egoistic and social motivations. With a factorial survey design we investigate how employers in small and medium sized companies in Germany decide how they would allocate 10.000 Euro between themselves and fictitious employees that vary regarding some characteristics. We focus on the relative strength of fairness norms and sanctioning power of the employees on the bonus payment as well as how both is being influenced by different informational conditions. For this, subjects are randomized into one of three decision environments that differ in their degree of transparency of the allocation. Knowing that there is a possibility for a bonus and knowing how it is allocated among the employees switches further motives for a bonus payment on and at the same time strengthens viz. weakens, though differently, both sanctioning considerations and the pursue of fairness norms. Although the fairness norm of proportionality dominates in each of the environments its degree strongly varies between non-transparency and transparency, indicating the divergence between subjective fairness ideals and social desirability. The impact of sanctioning power of the employees becomes absent through complete transparency. Altogether we show that social control not only influences the amount of bonus paid, but also the criteria of how to allocate.
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When are individuals called "German"? To answer this question two hypotheses are tested. The assimilation hypothesis posits that adaptation to the central cultural properties is important. These are, we suppose, command of the German language, being not a Moslem, and having a German spouse. The descent hypothesis claims that "being German" cannot be learned; one is German only if the parents are German. These propositions are tested by a factorial survey consisting of 579 respondents from Saxony. They were presented with situational descriptions consisting of combinations of the properties mentioned before. We found, among other things, that individuals are called "German" if they are born in Germany, if the parents are German (this has the strongest effect), and if one is fluent in German. Smaller but significant effects are given if one has lived in Germany for a long time, if one is not a Moslem and if the spouse is German. It was unexpected that being born in France or Turkey, having parents from one of these countries or having a spouse who is French or Turkish does not make much difference for being called "German".
This article deals with attitudes towards a just tax system and people's evaluation of their own tax burden. Starting from the thesis that the issue of justice is decisive for tax morality and tax compliance, the study asks, on the basis of mail survey data, what the criteria of justice are which people use to evaluate the income tax system. The survey consists of item questions and a Factorial Survey Design which allows the authors to demonstrate how people combine and weight different principles of justice. It is shown that, by and large, the features of the tax system are regarded as just. In a second step, the study tests two different explanations of what determines people's evaluation of the justice of their own tax burden. Whereas the first type of explanation proposes an exchange model which relates the taxes paid to the benefits the state is providing, attempts to see the second frame tax payments as contributions to the collective good and highlights the role of people's resources and the perception that others also pay their fair share. According to the latter explanation the higher income groups may also be willing to pay a higher share due to the greater resources they command. The results demonstrate that not the state provided benefits, but their own income situation and the perception that others also contribute their fair share matter in viewing their own taxes as just. This confirms the collective-good perspective that predicts that higher income groups may also be ready to shoulder a higher burden in financing state services. However, since the data are derived from a regional postal survey, they should be interpreted with caution, as only the first hints about existing attitudes towards the justice of the system of taxation.
Giving in the dictator game has often been interpreted as evidence of other-regarding preferences. We suspect that giving is determined by subjects’ attempts to appear fair in the eyes of recipients and the experimenter. Therefore, we investigate behavior in the dictator game by using the randomized response technique to increase anonymity. Overall, 290 subjects participated in two experiments. The results demonstrate that the randomized response technique reduces giving to negligible amounts compared to the standard double blind condition. Thus, our results suggest that individuals closely follow egoistic motives in the dictator game when anonymity is convincingly implemented.
Over the last decade, there has been a marked increase in the number of studies on attitude and decision research which use the factorial survey (FS) design. The FS integrates experimental set-ups into a survey: respondents react to hypothetical descriptions (vignettes) while the values of each attribute (dimension) of these descriptions systematically vary in order to estimate their impact on respondent judgments. As the vignettes are based on a number of dimensions and as respondents evaluate several vignettes, FSs are demanding in terms of individual cognitive and information-processing abilities. So far, there is little empirical knowledge of whether and to what extent this complexity is feasible in general population samples with heterogeneous respondents. Using data from a study on the fairness of earnings (with a mixed mode sample consisting a computer assisted personal interview [CAPI], computer assisted self interview [CASI], and paper and pencil [PAPI] mode), the complexity of FSs is analyzed in terms of: 1) design dimensions, such as the number of vignette dimensions (five, eight, or 12) and the number of vignettes for single respondents (10, 20, or 30), which were varied in a 3x3 experimental design; and 2) respondent characteristics that are associated with cognitive abilities (age and education). Two different indicators for cognitive load as well as learning and fatigue effects are analyzed: 1) latency time and 2) response consistency. The results show that raw reaction times but not latency times are longer for older respondents, suggesting that the cognitive effort needed for the evaluation of vignettes is not particularly high. Consistency measures reveal that respondents with a lower educational level show greater inconsistency in their evaluations when the number of vignettes is high. The number of dimensions has an effect on consistency only when respondents have to rate a large number of vignettes. In short, the results demonstrate that FSs are applicable in general population samples but should be used with a limited number of vignettes and dimensions per respondent.
Almost unnoticed by sociologists, experimental economics has expanded its research to many classical sociological topics such
as the evolution and stability of social norms, social sanctions and social order, reciprocity, and pro-social behaviour.
This article reports the main empirical findings and theories, their strengths and weaknesses, and explores how experimental
economics has furthered social theory. It concludes with the suggestion that sociology should bring experimental methods back
into the field and that economics should acknowledge that the research program is an interdisciplinary task analyzing the
basic aspects of human behaviour.
Der Artikel diskutiert Befunde aus der experimentellen Wirtschaftsforschung, die an klassischen soziologischen Erkenntnissen
anknüpfen. Insbesondere werden Studien zum Altruismus, über Reziprozität, soziale Normen und Sanktionen behandelt und der
Beitrag dieser Studien zur Weiterentwicklung der Sozialtheorie herausgearbeitet. Darüber hinaus werden methodische Aspekte
angesprochen und es wird dafür plädiert, dass die Soziologie sich wieder darauf besinnen sollte, dass zur Methodenvielfalt
auch Experimente und Feldexperimente gehören. Ökonomen auf der anderen Seite sollten den interdisziplinären Charakter des
Forschungsprogramms stärker betonen, an dem Forscherinnen und Forscher verschiedener Disziplinen beteiligt sind.
The paper compares behavior in economic dictator game experiments played with actual money (amounts given by "dictator" subjects) with behavior in hypothetical dictator game experiments where subjects indicate what they would give, although no money is actually exchanged. The average amounts transferred in the two experiments are remarkably similar. We uncover meaningful individual differences in real and hypothetical allocations and demonstrate the importance of two personality traits - agreeableness and extraversion - in reconciling them. We conclude that extraverts are "all talk;" agreeable subjects are "for real".
This paper deals with the question of whether or not a person's clothing and gender has an impact on how their social status is evaluated and how they are treated by other people in everyday interactions. Our conclusions are based on data gathered in field experiments. The same subjects visited the same retail store on two different occasions. They first appeared dressed in formal business suits, while the second time they wore casual clothing. Each time they requested various products and documented the reactions of the salespersons. It appears that interactions are indeed influenced by the "customer's" external appearance: fine clothing seems to make fine people! A secondary effect (not related to the issue of clothing) was also noted: interactions between men and women (female customer meets male sales assistant or male customer meets female sales assistant) appear to run more smoothly and result in fewer problems than interactions between persons of the same sex.
Empirical research on the enforcement of norms in everyday life is rare. The norm "Walk left, stand right!" on escalators in Munich's public transportation system offers a fortunate opportunity to study processes of norm enforcement. In a field experiment we restrained subjects from walking on the left side of the escalator and observed their reaction to this blockade (probability of sanctions, strength of sanctions, and length of time until a sanction occurs). Furthermore, we varied the clothing and gender of the persons blocking the escalator. Both treatments represent a dimension of social status, and both prove to be influential: An elegant outfit reduces the frequency and strength of sanctions and increases the delay before a sanction takes place; women are sanctioned within shorter time, verbally more frequently, and more strenuously, while men provoke more pronounced physical reactions.
The concept of reputation plays a crucial role in the literature of economics and economic sociology by providing an explanation of how exchange relations can be regulated in the face of uncertainty. There is empirical evidence that reputational information helps to discipline actors and leads to cooperative behavior. The question as to how reputation emerges has, however, not yet been answered. This paper analyzes the conditions under which information about experiences made with a business partner are passed on to a third party. The theoretical reasoning relies on the assumption that passing on information depends on costs and benefits. Hypotheses concerning the probability of information transfer are postulated with respect to the working of structural mechanisms like competition. Findings from a factorial survey of providers of vocational training indicate that information transfer only occurs under certain conditions: competition restrains whereas reciprocity and multiplex relations increase information transfer. An automatic mechanism generating reputation in social networks cannot be found. Instead, appropriate social structures are essential for it to emerge in networks of interaction.
We introduce a new social utility function which relates inequity aversion to social status, effort, and ability. The basic idea is as follows: Actors do not suffer from inequality but from inequity relative to a fair share that reflects some normative orientation the actors have internalized. In this regard we advocate the rule of proportionality which states that rewards should be proportional to some standard of comparison. We apply this social utility function to various games from non-cooperative and cooperative game theory and interpret the results with respect to the effects of social status on behavioral outcomes.
In this paper, the validity of vignette analyses of various forms of deviant behavior in the presence of opportunities is
analyzed on the basis of ideas derived from cognitive psychology. Abelson’s Script Theory together with insights into human
memory of visual and verbal information, allow the assumption that vignette analyses using visual stimuli are valid measures
of deviant behavior in particular. The study includes an empirical examination of these ideas (n=450). Nonparticipant observations and vignette analyses with visual and verbal material were carried out with regard to
three forms of deviant behavior occurring in the presence of opportunities presenting themselves in everyday life. Observed
and self-reported frequencies of deviant behavior or deviant intentions were counted and cross-tabulated. Log-linear analyses
with dummy coding using observation data as reference category were run. Data analyses yielded the result that frequencies
of deviant behavior were related to the techniques of data collection under consideration. Especially vignette analyses of
the return of ‘lost letters’ that use both visual and verbal stimuli overestimate ‘actual’ (i.e. observed) return rates. This
result is discussed with regard to the underlying methodological assumptions as well as its implications.
The aim of the factorial survey approach is to uncover the social and individual structures of human judgements of social objects. By having respondents evaluate samples of vignettes (fictive descriptions), in which several factors describing the object of interest are simultaneously manipulated, this approach has a number of advantages over traditional social survey research. The aim of the present article is to provide an easy-to-follow overview of the various ways in which the approach has been applied within sociology between 1982 and 2006. The review, which is based on 106 articles published in central sociology journals, is organised into three different sections: “factorial survey applications”, “factorial survey designs” and “factorial survey analyses”.
Der Beitrag will die Belastbarkeit und Plausibilität von mittels Vignettenstudien erhobenen Verhaltensabsichten durch ihren Vergleich mit „traditionellen“ Befragungsdaten zum tatsächlichen Verhalten prüfen. Am Beispiel von Umzugsentscheidungen in Doppelverdienerhaushalten werden Vor- und Nachteile beider Zugänge diskutiert und die inhaltlichen und methodischen Grundlagen eines solchen Vergleichs dargelegt. Als Datenbasis für die durchgeführten deskriptiven und multivariaten Auswertungen dienen ein zur Mobilitätsbereitschaft von Paarhaushalten durchgeführter Faktorieller Survey (vgl. Auspurg et al. in diesem Band) und das Sozio-ökonomische Panel (SOEP).
Diese Analysen kommen zu dem Ergebnis, dass die mittels fiktiver Situationsbeschreibungen erfragten Umzugsabsichten von weitgehend den gleichen Faktoren bestimmt werden, wie die tatsächlich erfolgten Umzüge im SOEP. Im abschließenden Fazit wird das Potenzial des Faktoriellen Surveys als Ergänzung zur herkömmlichen Befragung nochmals zusammenfassend diskutiert.