【paper abstract】

This paper investigates the effect of hierarchy leadership and social comparison on prosocial behavior in a setting of sequential charitable giving. The model shows that a follower (second mover) responds to a leader's (first mover's) giving conditional on the relative social status between the follower and the leader. We study this prediction in a field experiment that varies the social distance between the leader and the follower. The experiment consists of three treatments: in the ``leader treatment", the followers know the leader's name, affiliation, and giving amount; in the "peer treatment", the followers only know the leader's affiliation and giving amount; in the ``stranger treatment", only the leader's giving amount is revealed to the followers. The empirical findings show that the followers' giving critically depends on the social relationship with their leader. On average, the followers' giving is the highest in the peer treatment, which is 21 and 12 percent higher than that in the leader and strange treatment respectively. The followers' giving responds monotonically to the first mover's giving in the leader and peer treatments, but it is less responsive in the stranger treatment. The presence of hierarchy leadership discourages the followers' giving when the leader gives a relatively small amount (\$10 or \$20), 19 or 37 percent lower comapring to the stranger treatment, but increases the followers' giving when the leader gives a large amount (\$50 or\$100) by 58 or 53 percent comparing to the stranger treatment.