Intrinsic Preferences for Choice Autonomy

Jana Freundt, Holger Herz and Leander Kopp

No 10342, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Personal autonomy has been argued to be fundamental to well-being and is often discussed as an important driver of economic and political behavior. However, preferences for autonomy remain poorly understood. The major factor contributing to this limitation is the necessity to separate instrumental and intrinsic value components of autonomous choice. We propose a novel elicitation method that solves this identication challenge. We establish the existence of intrinsic preferences for choice autonomy and show substantial heterogeneity in a large online sample. We further study their antecedents by relating them to existing personality scales, socioeconomic characteristics and other attitudes.

Keywords: autonomy; preference measurement; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D01 D90 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dcm, nep-evo and nep-exp
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:ces:ceswps:_10342

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