Professor Li Jianbiao’s Research Group Paper Published Online in Experimental Economics

Recently, the paper I swear, I would like to donate later, co-authored by Professor Li Jianbiao, Dr. Zang Ruqian and Professor Niu Xiaofei from the School of Economics and the Center for Brain-Like Economics, Shandong University, was published online in Experimental Economics, a top journal in experimental economics.

Research shows that pledge donation has become the main way of donation and plays an increasingly important role in social and economic activities as an important mechanism of the third distribution. However, the phenomenon of pledging but not donating is serious. Adhering to the concept of booster mechanism design, the research group incorporated "I wear" into the pledge mechanism design. In four progressive studies, "I swear" manipulation was conducted on more than 1,500 Chinese and foreign subjects for different practical charity projects. The results show that "I swear" significantly increases the performance rate of immediate donation and pledge donation. At the same time, the research group also examined the individual heterogeneity effect of "I swear"—it has a significant effect in the low moral identity group and no effect in the high moral identity group. This research provides a simple and almost zero-cost effective mechanism to improve the performance rate of donation and pledge donation.

This research was supported by the Major and Key Programs of the National Social Science Fund of China, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province. The interdisciplinary research series of Professor Li Jianbiao’s research group has been successively published in top domestic and foreign journals such as PNAS, Management Science, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, and Economic Research (Quarterly). The team was approved as the second batch of scientific research and innovation teams by the School of Economics, Shandong University.