(iPoster) Is Your Pain My Pain? Altruistic Legacies of Herbicidal Warfare in Vietnam

• In Event: Poster Session: Issues in the Political Theory of Economic Equality and Democracy & Political Methodology
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Methodology

Abstract

How does exposure to wartime violence shape individuals' attitudes and behavior in post-conflict societies? Does such exposure foster empathy and altruistic behavior toward victims? To address these questions, we leverage a lab-in-the-field experiment and survey with a representative sample of herbicidal warfare survivors, their family members, and descendants in Da Nang, Vietnam. The findings are twofold. First, consistent with existing research, historical victimization is associated with increased social participation and empathy toward herbicide victims. However, this pattern is evident only among direct victims (herbicide survivors), not among indirect victims (family members and descendants). Second, results from an embedded Dictator Game (DG) with randomized receiver status reveal a contrasting dynamic: unlike non-victims, victims do not change their choices based on the receiver's victimization status. While non-victims demonstrate altruistic behavior toward herbicide victims, historical victimization and increased empathy do not necessarily translate into altruistic behavior among direct or indirect victims. Additional analysis using the causal forest technique confirms significant heterogeneity in the treatment effect of the randomized receiver status. These findings align with naive difference estimates and regression results, revealing that the respondents' victimization experience drives the heterogeneity, rather than other individual- or family-level covariates.

Author

• Gaku Ito, Osaka Metropolitan University