Thinking about need

Alexander Max Bauer (), Adele Diederich (), Stefan Traub () and Arne R. Weiss ()
Additional contact information
Alexander Max Bauer: Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Adele Diederich: Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg
Stefan Traub: Helmut Schmidt University
Arne R. Weiss: University of Alicante

The Journal of Economic Inequality, 2025, vol. 23, issue 3, No 4, 667-693

Abstract: Abstract We examine the role of need satisfaction in non-comparative justice ratings of endowments with goods. As normative approaches, we discuss utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and three versions of sufficientarianism. Using a vignette experiment with 109 participants, we elicit the participants’ justice ratings of endowments with living space and estimate their justice evaluation functions. We show that a need context increases the prevalence of prioritarianistic and sufficientarianistic justice ratings. Moreover, a need threshold also changes the utilitarians’ justice evaluation functions significantly.

Keywords: Basic Needs; Justice Principles; Prioritarianism; Sufficientarianism; Utilitarianism; Vignette Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10888-025-09698-1 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:joecin:v:23:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10888-025-09698-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10888

DOI: 10.1007/s10888-025-09698-1

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Economic Inequality is currently edited by Stephen Jenkins

More articles in The Journal of Economic Inequality from Springer, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().