Motives for Sharing in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Jakarta

We implemented laboratory experiments in Jakarta, Indonesia, to identify motives for sharing, including baseline altruism, directed altruism, sanction aversion, and reciprocity. The study area is located on the periphery of the Metropolis of Jakarta, many of whose residents are migrants and are closely connected with informal institutions such as Arisan, a rotating savings and credit association in Indonesia. Using data from sample households, the experimental results show that transfers based on baseline altruism accounted for the largest amount.Because the difference in the transferred amounts arising from the revelation of dictators' identities was statistically insignificant, we combined the four motives into two: preference-related motives (baseline and directed altruism) and incentive-related motives (sanction aversion and reciprocity) for the examination of their association with real world behavior regarding sharing. The empirical results suggest the importance of incentive-related motives in explaining variations in the amount of income transfers received from and sent to others.