Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/94554 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods No. 2014/3
Publisher: 
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
Abstract: 
We study experimentally whether and to what extent impartial decision makers are influenced by stakeholders´ fairness opinions in an allocation decision. The setting allows for different focal fairness rules to be considered. We compare communication treatments, in which one of the stakeholders states his or her opinion prior to the allocation decision, to a baseline without communication opportunities. We find that stakeholders who state their opinion in the communication treatments are allocated significantly less money than their counterparts in the baseline. Asymmetric reactions to the statements appear to be the driving force behind this result: impartial decision makers deviate from their initial fairness judgment and follow stakeholders´ opinions only if the requests are moderate; they largely ignore high monetary claims. Our results contribute to understanding the underlying processes that may affect the decisions of judges, juries, arbitrators, referees, or other impartial decision makers in interaction with stakeholders.
Subjects: 
fairness
norms
communication
impartial decision maker
laboratory experiment
influence
persuasion
JEL: 
D63
D02
K40
C91
D03
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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