When Giulia and Andrea meet Salma and Omar: Essays on cultural adaptation. Theory and Evidence

This dissertation consists of essays that examine the factors that affect the integration patterns in a culturally diverse society. In the first chapter, I introduce a theoretical model consisting of a cultural adaptation game focusing on the effects of strength of group identity and share of the minority in the population on the adaptation levels. The model focuses on the trade-off between coordinating with own group members by playing a pure coordination game and cooperating with other group members by playing a variant of a public good game. The model predicts that with low proportions of minority, only minority adapts and majority does not, however as the share of a minority increases, the likelihood of no one adapting increases even though mutual adaptation is Pareto dominant and socially optimal. In Chapter 2, I test the predictions of the model and the possible ways to improve efficiency in a laboratory experiment. The experiment follows the structure of the cultural adaptation game where mutual adaptation is socially optimal. The results from the experiment are in line with the theoretical results where, with a one-third share of minority, the likelihood of no one adapting increases. Therefore, to improve efficiency, I introduce the possibility of communication through a leader. The results show that only involving leaders with high ability and who can send a message to all the participants irrespective of the group can lead to mutual adaptation. The last chapter is a literature review on the role of the host country characteristics affecting the adaptation patterns of immigrants combining literature from economics, political science and cross-cultural psychology. This dissertation contributes thematically and methodologically to the existing literature by enhancing our understanding of the cultural adaptation process and how we can improve efficiency in today’s globalized world where inter-cultural contact is inevitable.