Participation and Decision Making: A Three-person Power-to-take Experiment

Max Albert and Vanessa Mertins

No 200805, MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: It is often conjectured that participatory decision making may increase acceptance even of unfavorable decisions. The present paper tests this conjecture in a three-person power-to-take game. Two takers decide which fraction of the responder's endowment to transfer to themselves; the responder decides which part of the endowment to destroy. Thus, the responder can punish greedy takers, but only at a cost to herself. We modify the game by letting the responder participate in takers' transfer decision and consider the effect of participation on the destruction rate. We nd that participation matters. Responders destroy more if they (1) had no opportunity to participate in the decision making process and (2) are confronted with highly unfavorable outcomes. This participation e ect is highly signi cant for those responders (the majority) who show negative reciprocity (i.e., destroy more when takers are greedier).

Keywords: fairness; participatory decision making; power-to-take game; procedural fairness; reciprocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:magkse:200805

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