Money burning is driven by reciprocity rather than spite

Abstract The money-burning game (MBG) is widely used to study anti-social or destructive behavior. We extend the design of the MBG to separate three motives that could lead subjects to burn their partner’s money – spite, reciprocity, and inequality aversion. We detect that reciprocity is the dominant reason: Most of our subjects would only burn their partner’s money if they believed that their partner would burn theirs. This finding has important implications for the interpretation of the behavior of the game.