Incentives and Prosocial Behavior in Democratic Societies

This paper studies the relationship between monetary incentives to encourage citizens’ contributions to a social good (voting, charity donation, etc.) and the society’s consideration for that good in the presence of social signaling. We establish that, no matter how much citizens value the social good, low incentives (or disincentives) may emerge as the unique majority voting outcome when concerns for social reputation are sufficiently high.