Sticky Influence: How Regulatory Interventions Affect Prosocial Behavior and Their Persistence in Economic Games

This study investigates how behavioral interventions affect prosocial decision-making in dictator and trust games, examining immediate and persistent effects. We conducted a two-round experiment with five treatments (defaults, sanctions, social norms, anchoring, moral persuasion) versus control, separated by an unrelated task to measure persistence. We explored how self-efficacy and gender moderate treatment effectiveness. Sanctions were initially most effective for increasing prosocial behavior across both games. When interventions were removed in round two, sanctions continued influencing trust game participants but showed gender-specific patterns in the dictator game, with effects observed only among women. Social norms affected only women across both rounds, significantly in the Trust Game and marginally in the Dictator Game. Additionally, we found self-efficacy and moral persuasion interactions among women only: higher self-efficacy increased giving in the dictator game but decreased giving in the trust game, with effects persisting into round two. No significant relationships emerged for men. Our findings demonstrate important policy implications. While sanctions effectively promote immediate prosocial behavior, interventions affect demographic groups differently. Understanding these differential impacts is crucial for policymakers evaluating behavioral intervention outcomes, suggesting that effective regulatory design must account for individual characteristics rather than assuming universal responses across populations.