Reciprocity and status in a virtual field experiment

Andreas Nicklisch () and Tobias Salz ()
Additional contact information
Andreas Nicklisch: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
Tobias Salz: Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn

No 2008_37, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: This article reports on a field study that has been conducted in the online computer game World of Warcraft. In a basic labor situation a principal gives an upfront wage to an agent (who is unaware that he is participating in an experiment) and asks him to conduct a real-effort task. The unique characteristic of the virtual world allows us to control for agents’ abilities to perform the task and to manipulate the principal’s social status. Confirming gift exchange theory, generous wages indeed increase agents’ efforts, even controlling for agents’ abilities, while the principals’ social status influences effort provision probability substantially. We interpret this result such that agents assess the kindness of the wages with respect to the expected principals’ wealth.

Keywords: Field experiment; gift-exchange; reciprocity; status; virtual world (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C88 C93 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2008_37online.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2008_37

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marc Martin ().