Sharing responsibility for the good

Relative to individual decision-making, decision-makers in markets have been argued to be more willing to accept negative externalities of their actions. A key mechanism potentially explaining this phenomenon is a diffusion of responsibility between actors in markets. In the preregistered experiment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of behavioral and experimental economics 2022-12, Vol.101, p.101953, Article 101953
Main Authors: Greiff, Matthias, Rusch, Hannes
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Experiment
Externality
Markets
Morals
Responsibility
Vaccination
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Summary:Relative to individual decision-making, decision-makers in markets have been argued to be more willing to accept negative externalities of their actions. A key mechanism potentially explaining this phenomenon is a diffusion of responsibility between actors in markets. In the preregistered experiment reported here, we test for an effect of responsibility diffusion in a new context: economic transactions with positive externalities. In particular, we test if participants’ willingness to pay for the vaccination of a child against measles differs between individual and bilateral decision-making. We find no such effect. Our study thus adds an(other) instructive null-result to the literature trying to pin down precisely which aspects of market interactions affect precisely which types of morally relevant decisions. •Does responsibility diffusion affect transactions that have positive externalities?•We provide a preregistered test using vaccinations against measles as externalities.•We find no robust differences between individual and bilateral decision-making.
ISSN:2214-8043
2214-8051
DOI:10.1016/j.socec.2022.101953