An Experiment on Dilemma Aversion and Information Avoidance

Fabian Bopp ()
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Fabian Bopp: Paderborn University

No 111, Working Papers Dissertations from Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics

Abstract: Many people claim to intend to act pro-socially but fail to implement their intention when informing themselves about the consequences of their own action is necessary for a pro-social action. This attitude-behavior-gap is well documented, even in situations where informing can be done without additional costs. One reason for this attitude-behavior gap might be that after being informed the perceived social dilemma is increasing. It might become more obvious that one can not get both an individual and a socially optimal outcome. In this study, I am exploring whether reducing the potential dilemma in the second stage is affecting ignorance behavior in the first stage. Using a novel identification strategy with the disadvantage of a counter-directed confounding factor by defusing the dilemma size, this study finds no evidence for dilemma aversion being an important factor in explaining information avoidance behavior.

Keywords: willful ignorance; strategic ignorance; conflict aversion; dilemma aversion; trade-off aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 56
Date: 2023-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-upt
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