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Preferences, intentions, and expectation violations: A large-scale experiment with a representative subject pool

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  • Bellemare, Charles
  • Kröger, Sabine
  • van Soest, Arthur

Abstract

We specify and estimate an econometric model which separately identifies the effects of distributional preferences and penalizing unfair proposer behavior ("perceived intentions") on responder decisions in the ultimatum game. We allow the effects of perceived intentions to depend, among other things, on the subjective probabilities responders attach to the possible offers. The latter allows expectation violations to be a driving force for responder behavior. We estimate the model on a large representative sample from the Dutch population. We find that the relative importance of distributional preferences and perceived intentions depends significantly on the socio-economic characteristics of responders. Strong inequity aversion to the other player's disadvantage is found for lower educated and older respondents. Responders tend to punish more unequal offers made by proposers if they expect that unequal proposals are made less often.

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  • Bellemare, Charles & Kröger, Sabine & van Soest, Arthur, 2011. "Preferences, intentions, and expectation violations: A large-scale experiment with a representative subject pool," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(3), pages 349-365, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:78:y:2011:i:3:p:349-365
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    Cited by:

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    2. Adrian Bruhin & Ernst Fehr & Daniel Schunk, 2019. "The many Faces of Human Sociality: Uncovering the Distribution and Stability of Social Preferences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(4), pages 1025-1069.
    3. Niklas M. Witzig, 2024. "Cognitive Noise and Altruistic Preferences," Working Papers 2415, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    4. Misato Inaba & Yumi Inoue & Satoshi Akutsu & Nobuyuki Takahashi & Toshio Yamagishi, 2018. "Preference and strategy in proposer’s prosocial giving in the ultimatum game," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(3), pages 1-15, March.
    5. Costa-Gomes, Miguel A. & Huck, Steffen & Weizsäcker, Georg, 2014. "Beliefs and actions in the trust game: Creating instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 88, pages 298-309.
    6. Matteo M. Galizzi & Daniel Navarro-Martinez, 2019. "On the External Validity of Social Preference Games: A Systematic Lab-Field Study," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(3), pages 976-1002, March.
    7. Slonim, Robert & Wang, Carmen & Garbarino, Ellen & Merrett, Danielle, 2013. "Opting-in: Participation bias in economic experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 43-70.
    8. Fehr Ernst & Epper Thomas & Senn Julien, 2020. "Social preferences and redistributive politics," ECON - Working Papers 339, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Aug 2023.
    9. Güth, Werner & Kocher, Martin G., 2014. "More than thirty years of ultimatum bargaining experiments: Motives, variations, and a survey of the recent literature," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 396-409.
    10. Ernst Fehr & Thomas Epper & Julien Senn, 2023. "The Fundamental Properties, Stability and Predictive Power of Distributional Preferences," Working Papers 2023-iRisk-07, IESEG School of Management.
    11. Alain Cohn & Ernst Fehr & Lorenz Goette, 2015. "Fair Wages and Effort Provision: Combining Evidence from a Choice Experiment and a Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 61(8), pages 1777-1794, August.
    12. Ernst Fehr & Thomas Epper & Julien Senn, 2023. "The Missing Type: Where Are the Inequality Averse (Students)?," Working Papers hal-04362826, HAL.
    13. Pelligra, Vittorio & Stanca, Luca, 2013. "To give or not to give? Equity, efficiency and altruistic behavior in an artefactual field experiment," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-9.
    14. Carpenter, Jeffrey & Robbett, Andrea, 2024. "Measuring socially appropriate social preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 517-532.
    15. Thomas Epper & Julien Senn & Ernst Fehr, 2023. "Social preferences across subject pools: students vs. general population," ECON - Working Papers 435, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Jan 2024.
    16. Slonim, Robert & Wang, Carmen & Garbarino, Ellen & Merrett, Danielle, 2012. "Opting-In: Participation Biases in the Lab," IZA Discussion Papers 6865, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Laurent Denant-Boemont & Matthieu Leprince & Matthieu Pourieux, 2019. "Distributive Preferences of Public Representatives: A Field-in-the-Lab Experiment," Economics Working Paper from Condorcet Center for political Economy at CREM-CNRS 2019-05-ccr, Condorcet Center for political Economy.
    18. Diaz, Lina & Houser, Daniel & Ifcher, John & Zarghamee, Homa, 2023. "Estimating social preferences using stated satisfaction: Novel support for inequity aversion," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    19. S. Bortolotti & M. Casari & F. Pancotto, 2013. "Norms of Punishment in the General Population," Working Papers wp898, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    20. Sara Schmid & Rudolf Vetschera & Judit Lienert, 2021. "Testing Fairness Principles for Public Environmental Infrastructure Decisions," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 611-640, June.
    21. Niklas M. Witzig, 2024. "Cognitive Noise and Altruistic Preferences," Papers 2410.07647, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2025.
    22. Orhun, A. Yeşim, 2018. "Perceived motives and reciprocity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 436-451.
    23. Fisman, Raymond & Jakiela, Pamela & Kariv, Shachar, 2017. "Distributional preferences and political behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 1-10.
    24. Kawamura, Tetsuya & Ogawa, Kazuhito, 2019. "Cognitive ability and human behavior in experimental ultimatum games," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 97-106.
    25. Alain Cohn & Ernst Fehr & Lorenz Goette, 2013. "Fair wages and effort provision: Combining evidence from the lab and the field," ECON - Working Papers 107, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.

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