Four essays on risk, altruism, and social norms

Altruism and cooperation phenomena have been extensively studied by psychology and the social sciences. Recently, these concepts have become increasingly important in economics as well. The field of game theory has formalized strategic behavior, and theoretical models of social preferences have been developed (Cooper & Kagel, 2017; Drouvelis, 2021). Furthermore, prosocial behaviors are complex and can be influenced by personal characteristics, particular situations (such as risky choices), and social norms. This dissertation aims to investigate these phenomena in depth, using experimental methods to explore different scenarios. The first study examines the various classifications of nudges in the literature by creating a unified framework that takes into account different dimensions of nudges. The second study is a field experiment on blood donations that implements a nudge policy using framing messages based on different types of altruism to increase donations. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of different messages on different types of subjects. The third study is a survey experiment examining the impact of cultural and social norms on the level of cooperation between individuals in southern and northern Italy. The findings suggest that individuals in the southern region exhibit a lower degree of trust in their fellow region residents, in contrast to those in the northern region. This may provide an explanation for the observed differences in levels of trust and citizenship, as reported in other studies. The fourth study is a laboratory experiment that aims to analyze the effect of altruism on risk through lottery tasks. The results indicate that men are more likely than women to make a risky choice that benefits a charity, exceeding the behavior estimated based on their baseline levels of altruism and risk.