Social Image and Economic Behavior in the Field: Identifying, Understanding, and Shaping Social Pressure

Abstract

Many people care about how they are perceived by those around them. Several recent field experiments in economics have found that such social image concerns can have powerful effects on a range of behaviors. In this article, we first review this recent literature aimed at identifying social image concerns or social pressure. We then highlight and discuss two important areas that have been comparatively less well explored in this literature: understanding social pressure, including the underlying mechanisms, and whether such pressure can be shaped or influenced.