I don't want to hear about it: Rational ignorance among duty-oriented consumers

Karine Nyborg

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2011, vol. 79, issue 3, 263-274

Abstract: Individuals with a preference for keeping moral obligations may dislike learning that voluntary contributions are socially valuable: such information can trigger unpleasant feelings of cognitive dissonance. I show that if the initial belief about the social value of contributions is too low to merit a moral responsibility to contribute, duty-oriented consumers are willing to pay to avoid information. Information campaigns can make such consumers contribute by providing them with unwanted information.

Keywords: Voluntary; contributions; Public; goods; Responsibility; Altruism; Information; campaigns; Cognitive; dissonance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268111000680
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: I Don't Want to Hear About it: Rational Ignorance among Duty-Oriented Consumers (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:79:y:2011:i:3:p:263-274

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().