The Value of Verbal Feedback in Allocation Decisions

Schmidt Robert J., Christiane Schwieren and Vollmann Martin

No 677, Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics

Abstract: Depending on the context at hand, people’s preference for receiving feedback might differ. Especially in allocation decisions that directly concern another individual, feedback from the affected person can have positive or negative value. We study such preferences in a laboratory experiment by eliciting the willingness-to-pay to receive or to avoid verbal feedback from subjects that were previously affected by an allocation decision. We find that most decision makers exhibit a positive willingness-to-pay for having control about whether feedback occurs or not. Specifically, decision makers that equally shared their endowment with the recipient revealed a positive willingness-to-pay for receiving, but not for avoiding feedback. By contrast, among decision makers that behaved selfishly, we identify both: subjects that were willing to pay for receiving and subjects that were willing to pay for avoiding feedback. The stated motivations indicate that curiosity, the desire to receive social approval and giving the recipient the chance to express his/her feelings are the main reasons for feedback acquisition, while shame and fear of negative feedback are the main reasons for avoidance.

Keywords: feedback; communication; non-instrumental information; social preferences; information avoidance; curiosity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dcm and nep-exp
Note: This paper is part of http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/view/schriftenreihen/sr-3.html
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heidok-279672 Frontdoor page on HeiDOK (text/html)
https://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver ... hmidt_2020_dp677.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The value of verbal feedback in allocation decisions (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:awi:wpaper:0677

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Gabi Rauscher ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).