Social Preferences, Public Policy, and Gender

Abstract

In most laboratory experiments concerning prosocial behavior subjects are fully informed how their decision influences the payoff of other players. Outside the laboratory, for instance when voting for a policy reform proposal, individuals typically have to decide without such detailed knowledge. To assess the effect of information asymmetries on prosocial behavior, we conduct a laboratory experiment with a simple non-strategic interaction. A dictator has only limited knowledge about the benefits his prosocial action generates for a recipient. We observe subjects with heterogenous social preferences, in particular inequalityaverse and efficiency-concerned individuals. While under symmetric information only individuals with the same type of preferences transfer, under asymmetric information different types transfer at the same time. As a consequence and the main finding of our experiment, uninformed dictators behave more prosocially than informed dictators. In an ex-post analysis of our experiment we also find that the differences in behavior under symmetric information are mostly driven by gender: women tend to be more inequality-averse, men tend to be more efficiency-concerned. Yet, both transfer under asymmetric information.