Prosocial motivations and reciprocity are becoming increasingly important in social-science research. While laboratory experiments have challenged the assumption of universal selfishness, the external validity of these results has not been sufficiently tested in natural settings. In this article we examine the role of prosocial motivations and reciprocity in a Pay What You Want (PWYW) sales strategy, in which consumers voluntarily decide how much to pay for a product or service. This article empirically analyses the only PWYW example in Spain to date: the El trato (‘The deal’) campaign launched by the travel company Atrápalo, which offered different holiday packages under PWYW conditions in July 2009. Our analysis shows that, although the majority of the customers did not behave in a purely self-interested manner, they nonetheless did so in a much higher proportion than observed in similar studies. We present different hypotheses about the mechanisms that may explain these findings. Specifically, we highlight the role of two plausible explanations: the framing of the campaign and the attribution of ‘hidden’ preferences to Atrápalo by its customers, which undermined the interpretation of El trato as a trust game.

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Pay what you want (PWYW) is an increasingly popular sales strategy in which consumers voluntarily decide how much to pay for a product or service. PWYW has often been described as an exercise in the "empathy economy," where consumers' payment choices might be seen as empowered expressions of their tastes and preferences, and sellers have a stronger incentive for empathizing with them. Beyond their economic interest, PWYW experiences also deserve significant attention in the social sciences given that they challenge several key assumptions of rational choice and neoclassical economic theory, as well as conventional consumer behavior and pricing theories. This paper analyzes three plays performed at the Beckett Theater in Barcelona using PWYW with very profitable outcomes. Our analysis shows that socio-psychological factors, such as payments attributed to others and satisfaction with the play, are the best predictors of customer payments.

Models of social influence have explored the dynamics of social contagion, imitation, and diffusion of different types of traits, opinions, and conducts. However, few behavioral data indicating social influence dynamics have been obtained from direct observation in “natural” social contexts. The present research provides that kind of evidence in the case of the public expression of political preferences in the city of Barcelona, where thousands of citizens supporting the secession of Catalonia from Spain have placed a Catalan flag in their balconies and windows. Here we present two different studies. 1) During July 2013 we registered the number of flags in 26% of the electoral districts in the city of Barcelona. We find that there is a large dispersion in the density of flags in districts with similar density of pro-independence voters. However, by comparing the moving average to the global mean we find that the density of flags tends to be fostered in electoral districts where there is a clear majority of pro-independence vote, while it is inhibited in the opposite cases. We also show that the distribution of flags in the observed districts deviates significantly from that of an equivalent random distribution. 2) During 17 days around Catalonia’s 2013 national holiday we observed the position at balcony resolution of the flags displayed in the facades of a sub-sample of 82 blocks. We compare the ‘clustering index’ of flags on the facades observed each day to thousands of equivalent random distributions. Again we provide evidence that successive hangings of flags are not independent events but that a local influence mechanism is favoring their clustering. We also find that except for the national holiday day the density of flags tends to be fostered in facades located in electoral districts where there is a clear majority of pro-independence vote.

RESUMENEn el presente trabajo se discute cuál puede ser el impacto de los incentivos laborales de la introducción de una Renta Básica de Ciudadanía. Más en concreto, trata de explorarse si dicha medida está condenada al fracaso debido a que produciría una evacuación masiva del mercado de trabajo o si, por el contrario, tal evacuación no constituye un escenario plausible y, por tanto, la propuesta resulta sostenible y viable en este aspecto. Para llevar a cabo dicha discusión se emplean modelos formales de teoría de juegos, ya que estos presentan diversas ventajas frente a la elaboración mental intuitiva. El trabajo concluye que, como sostienen los defensores de la Renta Básica, la medida resulta viable y sostenible en los escenarios empíricamente más plausibles.Palabras clave: Políticas sociales, Estado del Bienestar, workfarismo, disposiciones hacia el empleo, modelos formales. ABSTRACT This paper discusses the likely impact on job incentives of the introduction of a Citizens