Pro-social behavior in the TV show “Come Dine With Me”: An empirical investigation

•We analyze the influence of social factors and personal traits on behavior in the TV-Show “Come Dine With Me”.•Reputation, social in-game influences, objective sophistication, gender, age, and occupation are considered.•We employ a dataset including shows from the years 2006–2011.•We find that social in-game influences and personal traits have a significant influence on voting behavior. We investigate the influence of social approval, reputation, and individual characteristics on voting behavior in the German version of the TV show “Come Dine With Me”. Five contestants prepare a dinner for each other during the course of a week and evaluate each other’s performance. The winner receives a monetary prize. Evaluations remain concealed until the show is broadcast. Because actual voting behavior remains concealed during the show, a contestant could evaluate his/her opponents as zero in an effort to increase his/her own chances of winning, without risking later punishment in the form of low scores. However, this behavior is not observed in our dataset, which runs from 2006 to 2011. We find that all of the following have a significant influence on the evaluating behavior: the objective sophistication of a meal; the order of cooking; whether a person has already cooked; and the social similarity between contestant and evaluator. These findings help to improve understanding of the impact that reputation and social approval have on economic decision making.