The value of decision-making power in social decisions

Jan Hausfeld, Urs Fischbacher and Daria Knoch

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 177, issue C, 898-912

Abstract: People differ in whether they like to be in control of a decision or whether they would happily delegate a decision. We explore the heterogeneity and the underlying factors of the participants’ values of decision-making power in an allocation choice between a fair and an unfair option. This allocation decision affects the outcomes of the deciding person and three other people in different ways. We find that people differ in their preference for keeping this social decision, and more than 85% never pay for delegating the choice. The value for keeping the decision-making power is affected by the strength, but not the direction of social preferences, and relates to the preference for keeping a useless decision, i.e. selecting the winning number of a lottery. The value of decision-making power is reflected in response times and both eye- and mouse-tracking.

Keywords: Delegation; Social preferences; Experiments; Eye-tracking; Mouse-tracking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D23 D63 D80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:177:y:2020:i:c:p:898-912

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.06.018

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