The influences of social context on the measurement of distributional preferences

Matthias Greiff, Kurt A. Ackermann and Ryan O. Murphy

No 224, ECON - Working Papers from Department of Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Different social contexts have been used when measuring distributional preferences. This could be problematic as contextual variance may inadvertently muddle the measurement process. We use a within-subjects design and measure distributional preferences in resource allocation tasks with role certainty, role uncertainty, decomposed games, and matrix games. Results show that, at the aggregate level, role uncertainty and decomposed games lead to higher degrees of prosociality when compared to role certainty. At the individual level, we observe considerable differences in behavior across the social contexts, indicating that the majority of people are sensitive to these different social settings but respond in different ways.

Keywords: Distributional preferences; social preferences; other regarding preferences; Social Value Orientation (SVO); measurement methods; individual differences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D03 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Working Paper: The influences of social context on the measurement of distributional preferences (2016)
Working Paper: The influences of social context on the measurement of distributional preferences (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:econwp:224

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