Paternalism attitudes and the happiness value of fundamental freedoms

Kai A. Konrad () and Sven A. Simon ()
Additional contact information
Kai A. Konrad: Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance
Sven A. Simon: Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance

Economics of Governance, 2025, vol. 26, issue 1, No 2, 23-56

Abstract: Abstract Governmental regulations and prohibitions may effectively reduce self-harming behavior, but might also restrict personal freedom rights. This paper investigates into individuals’ preferences for the trade-off between being protected from taking self-harming actions by the state, and the desire to be free to choose. We introduce the Paternalism Preference Index to measure this preference. Our results indicate considerable heterogeneity in how individuals support, or object to, such governmental prescriptions. More importantly, we show the importance of the paternalism preference in a survey on life satisfaction during the Covid-19 pandemic. We find a reversed relationship between the preference for paternalistic state interventions and the valuation of personal freedoms. Individuals who prefer to have a larger choice set at the expense of committing potentially self-harming actions derive a higher value from personal freedoms in terms of life satisfaction.

Keywords: Paternalism preferences; Paternalism Preference Index; Governmental regulation; Self-harming behavior; Life satisfaction; Civil liberties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 H11 H12 K38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10101-024-00322-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
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:spr:ecogov:v:26:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10101-024-00322-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10101/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10101-024-00322-y

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Governance is currently edited by Amihai Glazer and Marko Koethenbuerger

More articles in Economics of Governance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().