Reciprocity and gift exchange in markets for credence goods

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kandul, Serhiy; Lanz, Bruno; Reins, Evert
• 署名单位: University of Zurich; Kyiv School of Economics; University of Neuchatel; Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain; ETH Zurich; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.06.001
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 52-69
• 关键词: Credence goods; Expert-sellers; gift exchange; RECIPROCITY; asymmetric information; lab experiment

摘要

We study the role of reciprocity in markets where expert-sellers have more information about the severity of a problem faced by a consumer. We employ a standard experimental credence goods market to introduce the possibility for consumers to gift the expert-seller before the diagnostic, where the gift is either transferred unconditionally or conditionally on solving the problem. We find that both types of gifts increase the frequency of consumer-friendly actions relative to no gift, but only conditional gifts translate into efficiency gains when the consumer faces a high-severity problem. This suggests that partial alignment of incentives via conditional gifts may outweigh kindness motives when reciprocal actions are not directly observed. Using further treatments with surprise gift exchange, we show that withholding a gift that is expected by expert-sellers significantly reduces the likelihood of consumer-friendly behavior whereas sending a gift to expert sellers who do not expect one has no effect.& COPY; 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/).