Paper: Bursztyn & Jensen (2017)

"Social Image and Economic Behavior in the Field: Identifying, Understanding, and Shaping Social Pressure". (2017). ARE
== Summary ==
=== 1. Introduction ===
Three objectives in the review:
# Review the recent empirical literature identifying social pressure across a range of settings
# Review and discuss existing and potential new work on how social pressure works
# Outline potential areas for future work
=== 2. A Simple Framework ===
Many actions that a person undertakes are observable by others, and may send others a signal about one's type. They use the framework from Benabou & Tirole (2006). This posits that an individual has social image concerns when her utility depends on the posterior expectations of her type held by others, conditional on observing her behavior. Formally, let an individual i undertake a visible action a_i \in \{0,1\}, that may reveal info about their type \sigma_i \in \{l,h\}where we assume the high type is more socially desirable within reference group j. We then define the social image term in i's utility function as: 
S_{ij} = \lambda_{ij} \mathbb{E}_i(\omega_j)\Pr_{-i}(\sigma_i = h \mid a_i) 
* \lambda_{ij} measures how much i cares about being perceived as the high type by group j.If \lambda_{ij} <0, then the i is a contrarian. If it is positive, they are a conformist. If it is zero, then they have no social image concerns.
* \mathbb{E_i(\omega_j)} corresponds to i's expectation of the social desirability of being seen as type h. Note: different groups may have different valuations for being type h, and so \omega_j's.
* \Pr_{-i}(\sigma_i = h \mid a_i)is the probability that other individuals in the reference group think that i's type is h conditional on observing their choicea_i. Note: individuals might be able to choose between different actions that differ in observability.
=== 3. Identifying Social Pressure ===
This section reviews the recent empirical literature testing for social image motivations.
==== 3.1. Empirical Approach ====
==== 3.2. Review of Recent Literature ====
* Voting:
* Education:
* Charitable giving:
* Effort in the workplace:
* Consumption and financial investments:
* Related effects:
=== 4. Understanding Social Pressure ===
Discuss the importance of understanding social pressure, and highlight open questions and avenues for future research.
=== 5. Shaping the Effects of Social Pressure ===
Discuss the potential for social pressure to be shaped, and priorities for future work. Notwithstanding the issues raised above about the difficulties of determining the welfare implications of social image concerns, an important question is whether such concerns or their effects on behavior can be shaped.
In the framework used in this paper, individuals alone cannot affect whether something is socially desirable, they can't affect \omega_j
.They are 'value-takers', in the same way that people atomistic agents are 'price-takers'! Are there models of culture/norm/value/moral change that model people as taking these values as given in their utility function, but able to act against them, so that if its too costly to abide or incentives are strong enough, people don't follow these values. Then, at the higher level make values a function (in part) of what everyone does, so that when a value becomes widely violated, it loses (part of) its force. It might still retain some force because possible the value come from a common recognition that it would be desirable to act in a certain way? As the environment changes, we can then have value changes. However, they can affect the other factors:
==== 5.1. Changing \Pr_{-i}(\sigma_i = h \mid a_i), the Ability to Infer Type from Behavior ====
Affecting social pressure through changing what others can infer about type given certain behavior. Examples include four different ways of doing this:
# Alter whether actions (or outcomes) are observable: Simply making something observable or not to others. E.g. to facilitate behavior that is stigmatized, increase visibility of desirable behavior to stimulate it, or increase visibility of undesirable behavior to introduce 'punishment costs'. 
#* Bursztyn & Jensen (2015) in the education context shows that the effect of an action being observable depends on the context—the peer/reference group in this case. 
#* Alternatively, one could allow people to opt in for reporting. E.g. for the students in the previous example, this would allow them to avoid the stigma of higher effort, while allowing others to signal that they are doing well or have high ability. [NOTE: they don't mention, but others knowing you choose to signal something voluntarily might change the interpretation of the signal]
#* Another possibility: use of symbolic awards or recognition. Might help reveal/increase visibility for desirable behavior, especially when performance is difficult to observe.Though note again from Bursztyn & Jensen (2015) that can work adversely if the behavior is not socially desirable; their addition of a leadership board led to decreased performance. [SEE THREE REFERENCES ON THIS] 
#* Another implementation: shame individuals who perform undesirable actions that are by default not observable to others. E.g. publishing lists of tax delinquents. [SEE REFERENCE]
# Weakening the signal contained in observable behavior: e.g. changing whether programs are universal or include mandates or defaults, this weakens the signal others can infer from one's behavior, since the action was not optional. E.g. in the Bursztyn & Jensen (2015) example, make the SAT prep course available to all students by default. 
# Altering the signal contained in an observable behavior: e.g. some studies have analyzed the effect of financial rewards for inputs or outputs in education, such as reading books or getting good grades. This changes the inference from observing the behavior to be motivated by financial gain instead, making it less informative about one's 'educational type'. Conversely, rewards might weaken socially desired behavior if these actions lose their ability to signal one's type (e.g. for donating blood). 
# Provide opportunities for countersignaling: e.g. veiling as a response among educated urban working women to countersignal religious adherence, or letting students who do well have more leeway in skipping a day of school to signal they are of a particular type.
==== 5.2. Changing E_i(\omega_j), Expectations of Social Desirability ====
This terms consists of two components, the social desirability that a group attaches to being a type, and the individual's perceptions of this social desirability of the group.
# Correcting or manipulating second-order beliefs: people might misperceive what others see as socially desirable. Stigma associated with certain behavior can lead to incorrect beliefs about others' beliefs: if everyone thinks that some behavior is undesirable then people avoid it, which reinforces the belief that it is undesirable. E.g. Bursztyn, Gonzalez & Yanagizawa-Drott (2020). In social psychology, this phenomenon is known as pluralistic ignorance: when most people privately reject a norm but incorrectly believe that most others accept it, and therefore end up following the norm as well. An interesting dimension of this phenomenon is that interventions that correct second-order beliefs might change social norms, this can also happen through other information shocks (e.g. support for anti-immigrant sentiments by learning election outcomes). 
# The expressive value of the law: there is a literature that studies how the act of passing a particular law sends a signal to others about a norm or prescribed attitude towards behavior. Such expressive value suggests that the law can be used to spur social norm changes, but there is little empirical evidence on this hypothesis. 
==== 5.3. Changing \lambda_{ij}, How Much People Care About Others' Opinions of Them ====
Being aware of the variation in how much some groups of people care about their social image can help to understand certain behavior, phenomena, or effects of policy changes. E.g. Funk (2010)'s finding that voting declined more in smaller communities when vote-by-mail was introduced in Switzerland, can potentially be explained this way: those in small communities might have a greater \lambda_{ij} because of stronger connections to others. 
=== 6. Conclusion ===
Although the existence of effects from social image concerns has been established, important questions remain unanswered. We propose that the ideal next steps in this literature would be to focus on understanding the underlying determinants of social pressure, the welfare consequences of such pressure, and whether and how social pressure can be shaped
== Footnotes ==