Guilt and voting in public good games
Rothenhäusler,Dominik Schweizer,Nikolaus Szech,Nora
Rothenhäusler,Dominik
Schweizer,Nikolaus
Szech,Nora
Abstract
This paper analyzes how moral costs affect individual support of morally difficult group decisions. We study a threshold public good game with moral costs. Motivated by recent empirical findings, we assume that these costs are heterogeneous and consist of three parts. The first one is a standard cost term. The second, shared guilt, decreases in the number of supporters. The third hinges on the notion of being pivotal. We analyze equilibrium predictions, isolate the causal effects of guilt sharing, and compare results to standard utilitarian and non-consequentialist approaches. As interventions, we study information release, feedback, and fostering individual moral standards.
Description
Date
2018-01
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Publisher
Research Projects
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Keywords
moral decision making, division of labor, shared guilt, diffusion of responsibility, institutions and morals, committee decisions, moral transgression, D02 - Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact, D03 - Behavioral Microeconomics ; Underlying Principles, D23 - Organizational Behavior ; Transaction Costs ; Property Rights, D63 - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement, D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information ; Mechanism Design
Citation
Rothenhäusler, D, Schweizer, N & Szech, N 2018, 'Guilt and voting in public good games', European Economic Review, vol. 101, pp. 664-681. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2017.08.001