Differences in decision-making and gender discrimination across cultures: Evidence from Saudi Arabia

People are brought into different cultures with various norms, different teaching styles, religions, beliefs, and experiences. Some cultures are based on individualistic principles others on collectivist principles with differing gender roles and their relative role expectations. Examining cross-cultural differences in behavioral economics is an essential step towards understanding and discovering the nature of the human decision-making process to gain a better understanding of why and how a decision is made. The literature on behavioral economics shows that humans are not always rational while making decisions; in fact, they often act according to a bounded rationality. Since literature has been recorded, economists have been investigating human motives for certain types of behaviors such as, altruism, trust, and reciprocity which affect the decision- making process. Age, gender, marital status, employment status, and other demographic variables have been used to identify human decision making, preferences, and perception of gender discrimination. In this thesis, the main goal is to shed some light on the differences in exchanges between Italian and Saudi Arabian culture and on the extent that economic development improves gender equality leading to less gender discrimination in society. In order to measure the differences in these exchanges that is, altruistic, trust and reciprocal behaviour, the ultimatum game, the trust game, and the dictator game respectively were used. These are experimental instruments that are traditionally used and referred to in the literature of behavioral economics. The results of these experiments varied significantly based on their partner’s gender and culture and on occasions when their identity was revealed to the other partner. This thesis contributes to the study of intercultural relationships, economic behavior, and perception of gender discrimination in Italian and Saudi Arabian people. There are two main aims of this study; first, to describe exchange behavior and gender differences across two cultures (Italian and Saudi Arabian) and its effect on economic behavior. Second, to investigate the perception of gender discrimination in the workplace and occupational preferences in Saudi Arabia, exploring the extent gender discrimination is associated with age, region, marital status,and education level. With the introduction of new policies, both men and women in Saudi Arabia are able to receive higher education in addition to the opportunity to study abroad. Moreover, a lot of cultural changes under Vision 2030 are occurring in Saudi Arabia which is breaking the barriers in women’s lives which are changing their strict gender role stereotype. This study is important in providing an early observation of the initial implementation of Vision 2030 and of the perception of gender discrimination in the minds of people of Saudi Arabia which has not yet been fully explored; the latter is the prime motivation of my study. My two chapters make several contributions to the literature regarding behavioral insights across cultures and the perception of gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia. The first chapter explains how cultural differences and gender influence behavioral patterns such as altruism, trust and reciprocity through the ultimatum game, the trust game, and the dictator game respectively among the people of Italy and Saudi Arabia. This study was able to investigate how the culture and the gender of participants affect their exchange behaviors. The second chapter shows how people perceive gender discrimination and how gender discrimination influences occupational preferences and the environment in the workplace in Saudi Arabia. A survey or online questionnaire was used to analyze people’s perception of gender discrimination in Saudi Arabia. Overall this thesis confirms the persistence of the existence of gender differences in behavioral patterns across cultures. Saudi Arabian females accept less than Italian male and female participants. However, these Saudi Arabian female participants sent more tokens when they were paired with Italian females. Italian participants were observed as being more trustful on the whole than Saudi Arabians and Italian females were seen to be more generous and altruistic than Saudi Arabian participants. Subsequently, significant gender differences were noted in the perception of and attitude towards gender discrimination, for example, Saudi Arabian males favor gender discrimination in Saudi Arabian society. There are clear differences in perception of and attitude towards gender discrimination according to educational level, for example, males with higher education did not favor gender discrimination. It is suggested that this is primarily due to the distribution of gender-typical stereotypes in Saudi society.