Evolutionary Origins of the Endowment Effect: Evidence from Hunter-Gatherers

By C. Apicella, Eduardo M. Azevedo, Nicholas A. Christakis, James H. Fowler. 2014

113 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The endowment effect, the tendency to value possessions more than non-possessions, is a well known departure from rational choice and has been replicated in numerous settings. We investigate the universality of the endowment effect, its evolutionary significance, and its dependence on environmental factors. We experimentally test for the endowment effect in an isolated and evolutionarily relevant population of hunter-gatherers, the Hadza Bushmen of Northern Tanzania. We find that Hadza living in isolated regions do not display the endowment effect, while Hadza living in a geographic region with increased exposure to modern society and markets do display the endowment effect.

Subfields: Demography, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/245bb47a0b8903324e541101c7c000af4f203220

Citations in the corpus

• Global Evidence on Economic Preferences* (2018, unknown): “In cultural economics and political economy, this paper is most closely related to research that has measured variation in preferences across societies by focusing on small selected groups such as small-scale societies or university students (Henrich et al., 2001, 2006, 2010; Apicella et al., 2014; ”