Self-serving redistributive preferences among natives and immigrants in the UK

Linda Dezsîo and Christian Koch

No 28, Research Papers from EcoAustria – Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: In an online experiment, we examine how ingroup bias and fairness concerns shape the redistributive preferences of UK resident natives and immigrants. Natives and immigrants were paired in a series of distributive situations. They chose how to divide a pie created from either party's previous contributions and stated what they believed to be their fair share from the vantage point of UK residents acting as unbiased spectators. In a complementary survey, we obtained these spectator divisions. We found that natives' and immigrants' distributive choices were absent ingroup bias. Their choices were, however, selfishly biased, as they invoked the fact that the pie was created solely from their own contributions. This behavior was eliminated when it disproportionately harmed the partner. Their fairness beliefs showed evidence of egocentric norm adoption: they favored equity as contributors and equality as noncontributors. They also believed that spectators would negatively discriminate against immigrants in favor of natives, but this perception was unfounded in light of spectators' divisions. We discuss the implications of our results for immigration research and integration policies.

Keywords: redistribution; equity; equality; United Kingdom; contributions; ingroup bias; self-serving behavior; egocentric norms; fairness; natives; immigrants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C99 D69 D91 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-mig
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