Shrinking the moral wiggle room: The role of social norms under attributional ambiguity

Fabien Giauque, Mehdi Farsi and Michael Puntiroli

No 26-08, IRENE Working Papers from IRENE Institute of Economic Research

Abstract: Giving may decrease in ambiguous settings, when individuals can better justify acting selfishly. This paper examines how attributional ambiguity affects giving behavior and whether normative messages can counteract these effects. In an incentivized experiment, participants can donate up to half of their earnings to non-profit organizations supporting the energy transition. We show that ambiguity decreases the probability of prosocial contributions. This is consistent with the theory of moral wiggle room, in which individuals exploit ambiguity in self-serving ways. We also find that perceived descriptive norms strongly moderate this behavior individuals with positive beliefs about others' prosociality are strongly affected by ambiguity, while individuals with negative beliefs remain largely insensitive. The counteracting effect of an injunctive fairness-based message remains partial and limited to participants with positive descriptive beliefs.

Keywords: incentivized experiment; charitable giving; dictator game; injunctive norms; perceived descriptive norms (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D64 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18 pages.
Date: 2026-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:irn:wpaper:26-08

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