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Moral Judgments in Social Dilemmas: How Bad is Free Riding?

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Author Info
Robin Cubitt () (University of Nottingham)
Michalis Drouvelis (University of York)
Simon Gaechter (University of Nottingham)
Ruslan Kabalin (University of Nottingham)

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Abstract

In the last thirty years economists and other social scientists investigated people’s normative views on principles of distributive justice. Here we study people’s normative views in social dilemmas, which underlie many situations of economic and social significance. Using insights from moral philosophy and psychology we provide an analysis of the morality of free riding. We use experimental survey methods to investigate people’s moral judgments empirically. We vary others’ contributions, the framing (“give-some” vs. “take-some”) and whether contributions are simultaneous or sequential. We find that moral judgments depend strongly on others’ behaviour; and that failing to give is condemned more strongly than withdrawing all support.

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Paper provided by The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham in its series Discussion Papers with number 2009-15.

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Date of creation: Aug 2009
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Handle: RePEc:cdx:dpaper:2009-15

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Related research
Keywords: moral judgments; framing effects; public goods experiments; free riding;

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