Markets and socially responsible behavior: do punishment and religion matter?

We use a set of lab-in-the-field experiments to study whether markets erode socially re-sponsible behavior in a typical Sub-Saharan African country. In the first experiment, we randomly assign participants to a version of a game framed as a "market" context or as a "neutral" (non-market) context. Contrary to the prediction of pure self-interest theory, market participants exhibit considerable levels of socially responsible behavior. However, participants in the market context reveal a lower level of socially responsible behavior compared to the participants in the non-market contexts. We also report that punishment and religion play a significant role in promoting socially responsible behavior in markets. In a second experiment, we test whether the erosion of socially responsible behavior leads to anti-social behavior using the joy-of-destruction game. The results show that the ero-sion of socially responsible behavior triggers anti-social behavior. Finally, we look at wel-fare effects and find that our market baseline yields lower welfare compared to markets regulated by punishment mechanisms.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/