Responsibility and effort in an experimental labor market

Previous indirect evidence suggests that impulses towards pro-social behavior are diminished when an external authority is responsible for an outcome. The responsibility-alleviation effect states that a shift of responsibility to an external authority dampens internal impulses towards honesty, loyalty, or generosity. in a gift-exchange experiment, we find that subjects respond with more generosity (higher effort) when wages are determined by a random process than when assigned by a third party, indicating that even a slight shift in perceived responsibility for the final payoffs can change behavior Responsibility-alleviation can be a factor in economic environments featuring substantial personal interaction. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: A13; C91; D63; J20; J52.