1. Three essays in experimental economics
- Author
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Larner, Jeremy
- Subjects
658.8 - Abstract
This thesis consists of three separate studies which were undertaken over the duration of my doctoral study in collaboration with other researchers. These are summarised below: The hist study investigates the extent that consumer ethnocentric tendancies (CET) affect consumption choices in China. Evidence of a resurgent nationalism partly fuelled by rapid economic growth portends a shift in consumption away from foreign towards domestic products. However, rising consumer demand for branded and luxury products cannot be fully met domestically. Much of the available evidence on Chinese consumer ethnocentrism is anecdotal and is based on attitudinal surveys that, as accurate measures of actual purchasing behaviour, suffer from certain methodological issues. In response, we report an experiment that measures the ethnocentrism of 447 Chinese consumers as their incentive-compatible choices between foreign and domestic products in a held setting. Our hndings show little effect of foreign origin on subjects’ choices that were only weakly related with attitudinal measures including the commonly used consumer ethnocentric tendencies scale (CETSCALE). Our results question the existence of ethnocentric consumer behaviour in China and the use of CETSCALE to gauge it generally. The second study looks at the importance of Chinese culture in cross-national negotiation, which has become conventional wisdom in international business research and practice. However, empirical work has not sufficiently established whether, how and under what conditions specific cultural values of the Chinese affect their negotiation decisions. We report an experiment with a purpose-designed game task in which Chinese subjects divide a fixed gain over escalating stages. We find that concerns for face and harmony promote cooperative? negotiation decisions while desire to win and risk seeking accentuate competitive ones. Values only predict behaviour in the critical, final stage of the bargaining process supporting a dynamic view of the effect of culture on negotiation. The final chapter consists of an experiment investigating the effect of difference computer mediated communication environments on persuasiveness and persuad-ability, which previously has been almost exclusively measured as self-reported attitude change from communications regarding hypothetical opinion issues. We introduce an alternative experimental approach that measures persuasion as behavior change in compatibly incentivised and fully informed subjects repeatedly performing a context-neutral task. We find that persuasion is far more effective in an audio-only condition, and investigate the effects of different demographic and personality factors on persuasiveness and persuadability.
- Published
- 2016