Reciprocity by Proxy: A Novel Influence Strategy for Stimulating Cooperation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Goldstein, Noah J.; Griskevicius, Vladas; Cialdini, Robert B.
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Minnesota System; University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Arizona State University; Arizona State University-Tempe
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• DOI: 10.1177/0001839211435904
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 441-473
• 关键词: organizational citizenship behavior; SOCIAL-EXCHANGE; ATTITUDE IMPORTANCE; incentives; altruism; rewards; self; help; identification; performance

摘要

We explored a novel reciprocity-based influence strategy to stimulate cooperation called the reciprocity-by-proxy strategy. Unlike in traditional reciprocity, in which benefactors provide direct benefits to target individuals to elicit reciprocity, the reciprocity-by-proxy strategy elicits in the target a sense of indebtedness to benefactors by providing benefits to a valued third party on behalf of the target (e. g., first making a donation to a charity on behalf of one's employees and then later asking employees to comply with a request). We hypothesize that this strategy should be more effective than the widely used incentive-by-proxy strategy, in which one makes a request of a target, promising to provide aid to a valued third party if the target first complies with the request (e. g., offering to make a donation to charity for every employee who complies with a request). We found that hotel guests were more likely to reuse their towels when the hotel's environmental conservation program used a reciprocity-by-proxy strategy than when it used an incentive-by-proxy or standard environmental strategy. Four additional experiments replicate this finding, rule out alternative explanations, and reveal that the reciprocity-by-proxy approach can backfire when the target audience does not support the beneficiary of the aid.