Repugnant markets and preferences in public

Abstract

This study examines the effect of making judgments in public (vs. private) on the moral permissibility and willingness to engage in three types of potentially repugnant markets (organ sale, prostitution, marijuana). An experiment was conducted where participants responded to a series of questions about repugnant markets and their answers were either publicly revealed to the group they were in, using their name and photo, or kept fully anonymous. There was no effect of making judgments in public for markets for organs or drugs. For prostitution, however, subjects judged it as substantially less permissible and reported lower willingness to engage in the activity (assuming it was legal) when asked in public compared to when asked anonymously. These effects were mainly driven by male participants. Our study confirms that social signaling plays an important role when understanding when and why people judge certain markets as morally (un)permissable.