Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/245766 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 14715
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
With the COVID-19 pandemic still raging and the vaccination program still rolling out, there continues to be an immediate need for public health officials to better understand the mechanisms behind the deep and perpetual divide over face masks in America. Using a random sample of Americans (N=615), following a pre-registered experimental design and analysis plan, we first demonstrated that mask wearers were not innately more cooperative as individuals than non-mask wearers in the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) game when information about their own and the other person's mask usage was not salient. However, we found strong evidence of in-group favouritism among both mask and non-mask wearers when information about the other partner's mask usage was known. Non-mask wearers were 23 percentage points less likely to cooperate than mask wearers when facing a mask-wearing partner, and 26 percentage points more likely to cooperate than mask wearers when facing a non-mask-wearing partner. Our analysis suggests social identity effects as the primary reason behind people's decision whether to wear face masks during the pandemic.
Subjects: 
face mask
COVID-19
cooperation
social identity
prisoners' dilemma
JEL: 
C9
I1
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
1.03 MB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.