IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v242y2024ics0165176524003331.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strategic ignorance and procedural fairness preferences

Author

Listed:
  • von Siemens, Ferdinand A.

Abstract

This paper shows that procedural fairness concerns might be a possible explanation for strategic ignorance, that is, that some people avoid information on how their behavior might hurt others. Decision makers with procedural fairness preferences suffer disutility from inequality in ex-ante expected payoffs. Such preferences lead to strategic ignorance if decision makers are in some sense focused on extremes: they generally dislike inequality in expected payoffs, but care little about changes in intermediate inequality. Importantly, this property does not imply a particular curvature of the loss function measuring the suffering from inequality. The theoretical possibility result suggests that more empirical research on strategic ignorance might be warranted.

Suggested Citation

  • von Siemens, Ferdinand A., 2024. "Strategic ignorance and procedural fairness preferences," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 242(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:242:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524003331
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111849
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176524003331
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2024.111849?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K., 2012. "Fairness, risk preferences and independence: Impossibility theorems," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 606-612.
    2. Gary E Bolton & Jordi Brandts & Axel Ockenfels, 2005. "Fair Procedures: Evidence from Games Involving Lotteries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(506), pages 1054-1076, October.
    3. Zachary Grossman & Joël J. van der Weele, 2017. "Self-Image and Willful Ignorance in Social Decisions," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 15(1), pages 173-217.
    4. Trautmann, Stefan T. & Wakker, Peter P., 2010. "Process fairness and dynamic consistency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 109(3), pages 187-189, December.
    5. Stefan T. Trautmann & Gijs Kuilen, 2016. "Process fairness, outcome fairness, and dynamic consistency: Experimental evidence for risk and ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 75-88, December.
    6. Jason Dana & Roberto Weber & Jason Kuang, 2007. "Exploiting moral wiggle room: experiments demonstrating an illusory preference for fairness," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 33(1), pages 67-80, October.
    7. Russell Golman & David Hagmann & George Loewenstein, 2017. "Information Avoidance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(1), pages 96-135, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gago, Andrés, 2021. "Reciprocity and uncertainty: When do people forgive?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    2. Stefan T. Trautmann, 2023. "Procedural fairness and equality of opportunity," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(5), pages 1697-1714, December.
    3. Hyndman, Kyle & Walker, Matthew J., 2022. "Fairness and risk in ultimatum bargaining," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 90-105.
    4. James Andreoni & Deniz Aydin & Blake Barton & B. Douglas Bernheim & Jeffrey Naecker, 2020. "When Fair Isn’t Fair: Understanding Choice Reversals Involving Social Preferences," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(5), pages 1673-1711.
    5. Lisa Bruttel & Werner Güth & Ralph Hertwig & Andreas Orland, 2020. "Do people harness deliberate ignorance to avoid envy and its detrimental effects?," CEPA Discussion Papers 17, Center for Economic Policy Analysis.
    6. Kops, Christopher & Pasichnichenko, Illia, 2023. "Testing negative value of information and ambiguity aversion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    7. Marta Serra-Garcia & Nora Szech, 2022. "The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 4815-4834, July.
    8. Bin Miao & Songfa Zhong, 2018. "Probabilistic social preference: how Machina’s Mom randomizes her choice," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(1), pages 1-24, January.
    9. Mechtenberg, Lydia & Perino, Grischa & Treich, Nicolas & Tyran, Jean-Robert & Wang, Stephanie W., 2024. "Self-signaling in voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    10. Schmidt, Robert J. & Trautmann, Stefan T., 2019. "Implementing (Un)fair Procedures? Favoritism and Process Fairness when Inequality is Inevitable," Discussion Paper 201-013, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    11. Claire Rimbaud & Alice Soldà, 2024. "Avoiding the cost of your conscience: belief dependent preferences and information acquisition," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 27(3), pages 491-547, July.
    12. Randolph Sloof & Ferdinand von Siemens, 2015. "Decision Initiation, Decision Implementation, and the Allocation of Decision Rights," CESifo Working Paper Series 5509, CESifo.
    13. Jannis Engel & Nora Szech, 2020. "A little good is good enough: Ethical consumption, cheap excuses, and moral self-licensing," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-19, January.
    14. Weiwei Tasch & Daniel Houser, 2018. "Social Preferences and Social Curiosity," Working Papers 1067, George Mason University, Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science.
    15. Exley, Christine L. & Petrie, Ragan, 2018. "The impact of a surprise donation ask," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 152-167.
    16. Momsen, Katharina & Ohndorf, Markus, 2023. "Information avoidance: Self-image concerns, inattention, and ideology," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 386-400.
    17. Hestermann, Nina & Le Yaouanq, Yves & Treich, Nicolas, 2020. "An economic model of the meat paradox," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    18. Elena Cettolin & Arno Riedl & Giang Tran, 2017. "Giving in the face of risk," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 95-118, December.
    19. Petrishcheva, Vasilisa, 2023. "Willful Ignorance and Reference Dependence of Self-Image Concerns," VfS Annual Conference 2023 (Regensburg): Growth and the "sociale Frage" 277591, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Nickolas Gagnon & Kristof Bosmans & Arno Riedl, 2020. "The Effect of Unfair Chances and Gender Discrimination on Labor Supply," CESifo Working Paper Series 8058, CESifo.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Strategic ignorance; Procedural fairness; Self-signaling; Decision under uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D80 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - General
    • D90 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - General

    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:eee:ecolet:v:242:y:2024:i:c:s0165176524003331. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    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.