Date of Award
2025
Degree Type
Open Access Dissertation
Degree Name
Economics, PhD
Program
School of Social Science, Politics, and Evaluation
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
C. Monica Capra
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Joshua Tasoff
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
Tom Kniesner
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2025 Xi Chen
Keywords
buying behavior, corruption, information avoidence, loot box, meat consumption, solicitation
Subject Categories
Economics
Abstract
This paper include three parts analyzing the effect of bribery solicitation, the effect of pity System and the effect of meat consumption on information avoidance. The first chapter is the analysis of the effect of bribery solicitation on behavior change. Bribe solicitation is a critical but overlooked part of corruption. This paper uses a one-shot online experiment between citizens and government staff (n = 550) to examine how the opportunity to send no, ambiguous, or clear solicitation messages affects bribery behavior. I find that bribe solicitation opportunity increases corruption by affecting behavior on both sides, depending on message content. The findings indicate that the bribe solicitation opportunity affects the behavior of government staff by reducing its moral cost. These results highlight the importance of recognizing solicitation behavior in the design of anti-corruption policies. The second chapter is the analysis of the effect of pity-system on buying behavior of loot box. The pity-system is a guaranteed reward mechanism commonly used by electronic game companies to bypass gambling regulations. This paper tests the effect of the pity-system in an online experiment (n = 200) where subjects choose to buy the loot-boxes-like lottery with or without the pity-system. The pity-system only increases the number of rounds played, leading to a mild increase in the total number of purchases. These findings challenge the assumption underlying certain regulation policies that pity-system mitigates excessive gambling engagement. This study contributes the first experimental evidence to the literature on digital gambling, risk preferences, and consumer behavior. The third chapter is the analysis of the meat consumption on information avoidance. Animal welfare in meat production is concerning for ethical reasons. Research in psychology has shown that contemporaneous consumption of meat causes people to have less moral concern for farmed animals. Following this research, we run a laboratory experiment to test whether near contemporaneous meat consumption can affect behavior directly through information choice about animal welfare, contributions to an animal charity, and a proxy measure for political behavior. We also test for the indirect effects of meat consumption on our charity outcome and political outcome by way of its effect on information preferences. Though we find that meat consumption changes attitudes towards animals, and information changes charitable contributions, we find that meat consumption does not affect our behavior outcomes. The null result casts doubt on the extent to which shifts in attitudes translate to shifts in behavior. An online hypothetical experiment finds that information preferences are consistent with expected-utility theory, and we again find no evidence of motivated thinking on behavior.
ISBN
9798288852503
Recommended Citation
Chen, Xi. (2025). Three Essays on Behavioral Economics : Bribery Solicitation, Pity System and Information Avoidance. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 982. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/982.
