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How information about effort and luck shapes altruism of social preferences: a survey experiment

Author

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  • Begoña Cabeza Martínez

    (European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)
    Centre for Social Policy (University of Antwerp))

  • Koen Decancq

    (Centre for Social Policy (University of Antwerp)
    Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Sciences (London School of Economics)
    Department of Economics (KULeuven))

Abstract

This paper introduces a test to compare the levels of altruism of social preferences over the decision maker’s own and another person’s monetary pay-off. We propose a straightforward adaptive bisectional method for eliciting social preferences, applied in an online survey experiment with 573 decision makers. In the experiment, we provided randomized information about the other person’s effort and luck to assess how this information influences the altruism of the social preferences. Our results reveal that decision makers exhibit greater altruism when informed of high effort and reduced altruism when the other person is perceived as lucky.

Suggested Citation

  • Begoña Cabeza Martínez & Koen Decancq, 2025. "How information about effort and luck shapes altruism of social preferences: a survey experiment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 23(3), pages 695-716, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecin:v:23:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10888-025-09699-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s10888-025-09699-0
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