Measuring Socially Appropriate Social Preferences

Jeffrey Carpenter and Andrea Robbett

No 15590, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We extend the literature structurally estimating social preferences by accounting for the desire to adhere to social norms. Our representative agent is strongly motivated by norms and failing to account for this causes us to overestimate how much agents care about helping those who are worse off. We endogenously identify latent preference types that replicate previous estimates; however, accounting for the normative appropriateness of decisions reveals different motives. Rather than being mostly altruistic, participants are better described as strong altruists or norm followers. Our results (which are robust to moral wiggle room) thus recast prior findings in a new light.

Keywords: structural estimation; moral wiggle room; altruism; social preferences; social norms; experiment; finite mixture models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C49 C91 D01 D30 D63 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2022-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published - published in: Games and Economic Behavior 2024, 147, 517 - 532

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Journal Article: Measuring socially appropriate social preferences (2024)
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