We analyze the costs and benefits of using social image to foster virtuous behavior. A Principal seeks to motivate reputation-conscious agents to supply a public good. Each agent chooses how much to contribute based on his own mix of public-spiritedness, private signal about the value of the public good, and reputational concern for appearing prosocial. By making individual behavior more visible to the community the Principal can amplify reputational payoffs, thereby reducing free-riding at low cost. Because societal preferences constantly evolve, however, she knows only imperfectly both the social value of the public good (which matters for choosing her own investment, matching rate or legal policy) and the importance attached by agents to social esteem and sanctions. Increasing publicity makes it harder for the Principal to learn from what agents do (the "descriptive norm") what they really value (the "prescriptive norm"), thus presenting her with a tradeoff between incentives and information aggregation. We derive the optimal degree of privacy/publicity and matching rate, then analyze how they depend on the economy's stochastic and informational structure. We show in particular that in a fast-changing society (greater variability in the fundamental or the image-motivated component of average preferences), privacy should generally be greater than in a more static one.

中文翻译：

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图像与信息：改变社会规范和最佳隐私

我们分析了使用社会形象来培养道德行为的成本和收益。委托人寻求激励注重声誉的代理人提供公共物品。每个代理人根据自己的公共精神、关于公共利益价值的私人信号以及对表现出亲社会的声誉关注来选择贡献多少。通过让社区更清楚地了解个人行为，委托人可以放大声誉回报，从而以低成本减少搭便车。然而，由于社会偏好不断变化，她对公共物品的社会价值（这对她选择自己的投资、匹配率或法律政策很重要）和代理人对社会尊重和制裁的重视程度知之甚少。越来越多的宣传使委托人更难从代理所做的事情（“描述性规范”）中了解他们真正重视的东西（“规范性规范”），从而为她提供了激励和信息聚合之间的权衡。我们推导出最佳隐私/公开程度和匹配率，然后分析它们如何依赖于经济的随机和信息结构。我们特别表明，在一个快速变化的社会（平均偏好的基本或图像驱动部分的更大可变性）中，隐私通常应该比更静态的社会更大。我们推导出最佳隐私/公开程度和匹配率，然后分析它们如何依赖于经济的随机和信息结构。我们特别表明，在一个快速变化的社会（平均偏好的基本或图像驱动部分的更大可变性）中，隐私通常应该比更静态的社会更大。我们推导出最佳隐私/公开程度和匹配率，然后分析它们如何依赖于经济的随机和信息结构。我们特别表明，在一个快速变化的社会（平均偏好的基本或图像驱动部分的更大可变性）中，隐私通常应该比更静态的社会更大。