On the Nature of Fair Behaviour: Further Evidence

Abstract

This paper offers further experimental evidence on the nature of fair behaviour, investigating the effects of different splitting options on offers and rejection rates of low offers in ultimatum games. The experiment provides a robustness check of the validity of the results in the literature concerning the behaviour of the proposer and questions the reliability of interdependent preferences for explaining rejection rates. We test whether the introduction of a 50–50 splitting option combined with observability by a third-party may have an impact on offers and rejection rates of low offers. We find similar results as previous studies regarding the impact on offers by introducing the 50–50 option, consistent with a “regard for others” effect. We show that the impact appears to be enhanced by introducing observability, consistent with a “regard by others” effect. Introducing a 50–50 splitting option seems to increase the rejection rate for low offers as in previous studies, but turns out not significant. The introduction of the 50–50 option combined with observability may have some impact on the rejection rate, albeit not highly significant.