7/23/2019 BanerjeeChak Abstract PsychOwnershipFramingNov2013

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Psychological Ownership and Other Regarding Behaviour: Some

Evidence From Dictator Games* 

Priyodorshi Banerjee†

Sujoy Chakravarty‡ 

 November 23, 2013

Abstract

We study the effect of psychological ownership on the other regarding behaviour of

dictators when they are asked to allocate out of their own endowment (the standard

individually framed dictator game) vis-à-vis out of an endowment that belongs

notionally to a group that constitutes themselves and the recipient. We use framing of

task instructions to assign property rights for the endowment either to the individual

(dictator) or the two member group. We also frame instructions that identify thematched dictator and recipient as members of a group, but with the endowment

 belonging solely to the dictator. We find that only when psychological ownership of

the endowment is transferred to the group does the give rate of dictators increase by

about Rs 40 (8 percent of the endowment) compared to the standard individually

framed dictator game baseline. Merely framing the instructions to convey that the

dictator and recipient are in a group, keeping property rights with the dictator, does

not increase contributions significantly over that seen in the standard dictator game.

These results remain after controlling for demographic characteristics. A hurdle

regression shows that group ownership influences the decision to give a positive

amount, but not the amount given, conditional on it being positive.

Keywords: Psychological ownership, dictator game, group framing

JEL Classification: C7, C91

* We thank Sanmitra Ghosh, Rajat Acharya, Gautam Gupta and the Centre for Experimental and

Behavioural Social Sciences (CESBS) at Jadavpur University and Bibek Banerjee, Debabrata Datta

and Dhiraj Sharma of IMT Ghaziabad for allowing us to use their facilities to conduct experiments.

Suranjali Tandon, Arijit Das and Anwesha Mukherjee provided excellent research assistance. This

research has greatly benefitted from the participants at the University of Kolkata Workshop on

Experimental Economics, 2011 and the Economic Science Association (ESA) World Meet 2011.Tore

Ellingsen, Robert Gazzale, Anders Poulsen, Emmanuel Dechenaux and an anonymous referee aregratefully acknowledged for their insightful comments and suggestions. This research was made

 possible by a PPRU grant from the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) Delhi and a CAS grant from

Jawaharlal Nehru University. We retain the responsibility for all errors and omissions.

† Economic Research Unit, ISI Kolkata, 700108. Email: banpriyo@gmail.com Tel: +91 33 2575 2616

‡ Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University,

 New Delhi 110067 and IMT Ghaziabad, Ghaziabad, 201001. Email: sujoyc@gmail.com Tel: +91 11

2670 4421