BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Behav. Econ.
Sec. Culture and Ethics
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frbhe.2025.1612211
The Power of the Purse: Gender, Cooperation, and Socially Responsible Consumption
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Economics, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Santiago, Santiago de Chile, Chile
- 2Department of Management and Law, Faculty of Economics, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Roma, Italy
- 3Department of Economic and Business Sciences, Faculty of Legal, Economic and Political Sciences, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy
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We test for gender effects in the "vote with your wallet" game (VWG), a multi-person version of the prisoner's dilemma (PD) that models responsible consumption decisions. We find that women cooperate significantly more (have more responsible consumption decisions) than men in the baseline version of the game. This baseline excludes three additional elements tested in companion treatments: i) a legality frame, where the ethical product is labeled as being certified for compliance with anti-corruption standards; ii) an ex-post redistribution scheme, where those who buy the less ethical product compensate those who choose the more responsible option; and iii) a conformity treatment, where participants are informed of prior players' choices to simulate social influence. Without these added interventions, women still show significantly greater cooperation, revealing a baseline preference for prosocial behavior in this strategic consumption setting. JEL Classification: C92 , C72 , H23 , D03
Keywords: cooperation, Socially responsible consumption behavior, gender, Vote with the Wallet Game, social preferences
Received: 15 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vasquez, Becchetti and Pelligra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Alejandra Vasquez, alejandra.vasquez.a@usach.cl
Vittorio Pelligra, pelligra@unica.it
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