Intrinsic Preferences for Autonomy

Jana Freundt (), Holger Herz and Leander Kopp ()
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Jana Freundt: University of Fribourg, Switzerland, https://janafreundt.net
Leander Kopp: University of Fribourg, Switzerland

No 530, FSES Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland

Abstract: Personal autonomy has been argued to be fundamental to well-being and is often discussed as an important driver of economic and political behavior. Yet, preferences for autonomy are not well understood, because their identification requires the separation of instrumental value attached to autonomous choice. We propose a novel elicitation method that solves this identification challenge. We establish the existence of intrinsic preferences for choice autonomy and show substantial heterogeneity in a large online sample. We further study their antecedents by relating them to existing personality scales and socioeconomic characteristics. Finally, we test their association with other preferences, attitudes and beliefs.

Keywords: autonomy; delegation; experiment design; choice consistency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 93
Date: 2023-04-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-inv
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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