The Influence of Short-Term Financial Incentives on Social Norms and Behaviors
Co-Principal Investigators
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- Jinhua Zhao
- Professor and Director, ESPP
- 517 353 9935
- jzhao@msu.edu
Non-AFRE Co-Principle Investigators: (PI) Maria Lapinski-Lafaive, other (Co-Pi’s)John Kerr
This is a National Science Foundation – Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research (IBSS) funded grant, implemented by the Department of Communication, with collaboration from AFRE and Community Sustainability Departments at MSU. This project will integrate economic models and theories of the influence of social norm to explain and predict the ways in which monetary incentives influence social norms and behaviors.
The researchers will base their work in Sanjiangyuan, a Chinese region in southern Qinghai Province on the Tibetan Plateau. They will use interviews and surveys with research subjects to develop culturally specific quantitative measures of social norms and related variables. They will conduct a series of field experiments to test the causal linkages posited among communication, monetary incentives, social norms, and behaviors, and they will translate theoretical and empirical results to offer possible policy modifications for the design of incentive-based environmental conservation programs in the study region and elsewhere.
Implementation Sept. 2013 – Feb. 2017.