IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/32847.html

Eliciting Thresholds for Interdependent Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Moritz Janas
  • Nikos Nikiforakis
  • Simon Siegenthaler

Abstract

Individuals’ willingness to act often depends on how many others do, but the structure of such interdependence is hard to disentangle with observational data. We introduce an incentivized method to measure interdependence, grounded in threshold models. We apply it to a stratified U.S. sample of 5,000+ Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White adults to study support for affirmative action. We document substantial heterogeneity in thresholds consistent with preregistered hypotheses from a model. Following changes in federal support for affirmative action, thresholds shift even as perceived benefits and beliefs remain unchanged, indicating that thresholds provide insights not captured by standard behavioral measures.

Suggested Citation

  • Moritz Janas & Nikos Nikiforakis & Simon Siegenthaler, 2024. "Eliciting Thresholds for Interdependent Behavior," NBER Working Papers 32847, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32847
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w32847.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C83 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Data Collection and Data Estimation Methodology; Computer Programs - - - Survey Methods; Sampling Methods
    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32847. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.