Intrinsic Preferences for Autonomy

Arbeitspapier

Personal autonomy has been argued to be fundamental to well-being and is often discussed as an important driver of economic and political behavior. Yet, preferences for autonomy are not well understood, because their identification requires the separation of instrumental value attached to autonomous choice. We propose a novel elicitation method that solves this identification 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 and socioeconomic characteristics. Finally, we test their association with other preferences, attitudes and beliefs.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 10342

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles ; Micro-Based Behavioral Economics: General‡ ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Individual
• Subject: autonomy ; preference measurement ; experiment

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Freundt, Jana ; Herz, Holger ; Kopp, Leander
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2023

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/271986
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET