Social and Moral Distance in Risky Settings

Anastasios Koukoumelis (), Maria Levati and Chiara Nardi
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Anastasios Koukoumelis: Department of Economics, University of Bath

No 13/2021, Working Papers from University of Verona, Department of Economics

Abstract: Many socially desirable actions are subject to risk and occur in situations where the others are not anonymous. Assessing whether lower subject-subject anonymity affects behavior when outcomes are risky is likely important but has not been studied in depth so far. Herein, we provide evidence on this issue. In a series of allocation tasks, all of them variations of the dictator game, we systematically vary the party who is exposed to risk and manipulate recipient anonymity by reducing the social and/or moral distance between the two parties. We propose a model that extends previous work by allowing not only for ex ante and ex post fairness but also for altruism. The model is consistent with observed behavior. In particular, a reduction in social and moral distance significantly increases the likelihood of equal split and more than equal split choices.

Keywords: Risk; Fairness; Altruism; Anonymity; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D63 D64 D81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-gth
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Working Paper: Social and Moral Distance in Risky Settings (2023)
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