SPITE AND STRONG RECIPROCITY IN THE BARGAINING GAME: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
SPITE AND STRONG RECIPROCITY IN THE BARGAINING GAME: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Summary/Abstract: The subject of this paper is spite and spiteful behaviour from the point of view of behavioural economics. We conducted an experimental study using a ’mini-ultimatum game‘ with complete information about payoffs and unfavourable outside option. The sample consists of 748 undergraduate students from the Faculty of Law of the University of Niš and the Faculty of Law of the University of Belgrade. In a between-subjects design, 604 different participants are tested in the control and treatment group. In the within-subjects experiment, 144 subjects served as their own control group. The main finding is that there is a statistically significant relationship between the outside option and the respondents’ choice, with roughly one-third of respondents exhibiting spiteful behaviour. Also, we found a statistically significant difference between Belgrade and Niš concerning the insistence on fair treatment, but no difference when examining the share of spiteful respondents - no regional effects on spiteful behaviour. We did not find a difference between gender concerning fair treatment, but females in Niš exhibited weakly significant level of spiteful behaviour. The study opens the door to further research with an emphasis on other subjects aimed at covering different age groups and capturing additional characteristics of the spiteful behaviour.

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