A note on testing guilt aversion

Charles Bellemare (), Alexander Sebald () and Sigrid Suetens

Games and Economic Behavior, 2017, vol. 102, issue C, 233-239

Abstract: We compare three approaches to test for guilt aversion in two economic experiments. The first approach elicits second-order beliefs using self-reports. The second approach discloses first-order beliefs of matched players to decision makers, which are taken as exogenous second-order beliefs of decision makers. The third approach lets decision makers make choices conditional on a sequence of possible first-order beliefs of matched players. We find that the first and third approach generate similar results, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The second approach, however, generates significantly higher levels of ‘kindness’ for low levels of beliefs: at a second-order belief of zero, the probability of choosing the ‘kind’ action is between 43 and 65 percentage points higher than with the other approaches.

Keywords: Guilt aversion; Elicitation method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (35)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:102:y:2017:i:c:p:233-239

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.11.002

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