Hold Me Accountable: Anonymity and Prosocial Behavior in Services

Problem definition: Many services rely on the prosocial behavior of consumers that benefits the wider community for effective delivery, such as bike-sharing schemes, self-service checkouts in grocery stores, and pathology screening services, yet there are frequent challenges in motivating honest, cooperative user behavior in these services. We build on existing research to argue that the degree of anonymity of users toward the service provider can be used to facilitate their prosocial behavior. Anonymity has two effects: It removes the ability of individuals to build a public reputation as someone who is prosocial, but it also removes accountability to others. Although studies have examined the effect of reputational motivation, studies of the effect of accountability on prosocial behavior have been limited to laboratory and online settings, where accountability, mostly toward their peers or to a “higher power,” only benefited other participants. Thus, little is known about how accountability toward the service provider can affect prosocial behavior that benefits the wider public. Methodology/results: We investigate this context with a unique proprietary data set from a pooled asymptomatic pathological screening program. We find that increasing anonymity by removing names from test kits distributed by the service provider decreased voluntary participation by 22%. Social pressures in larger groups partially substituted for the reduced accountability from removing names, providing an insight that can help mitigate reduced accountability in settings where anonymity is preferred. Managerial implications: For managers, we emphasize the value of accountability to the service provider as a motive for prosocial behaviors such as honesty and cooperation. For policymakers, we provide insight into designing healthcare screening and public interaction services. Funding: This work was supported, in part, by the Tulane Supporting Impactful Publications Program. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2023.0667 .