Measuring Socially Appropriate Social Preferences

Arbeitspapier

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.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 15590

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making‡ ; Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement ; Distribution: General ; Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics: Other
• Subject: experiment ; social norms ; social preferences ; altruism ; moral wiggle room ; structural estimation ; finite mixture models

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Carpenter, Jeffrey P. ; Robbett, Andrea
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
• (where): Bonn
• (when): 2022

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/265811
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET