Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/261070 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
AWI Discussion Paper Series No. 705
Publisher: 
University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Pro-social individuals face a trade-off between their monetary and moral motives. Hence, they may be tempted to exploit the uncertainty in their decision environment in order to reconcile this trade-off. In this paper, we investigate whether individuals with belief-dependent preferences avoid the monetary cost of behaving according to their moral standards by strategically acquiring information about others' expectations. We test the predictions of an information acquisition model in an online experiment. We use a modified trust-game in which we introduce uncertainty about the second movers' beliefs about first-movers' expectations. Our design enables to (i) identify participants with belief-based preferences and (ii) investigate their information acquisition strategy. Consistent with our predictions of subjective preferences, we find that most individuals classified as belief-dependent strategically select their source of information to avoid the cost of their conscience.
Subjects: 
Belief-dependent preferences
illusory preferences
information acquisition
self-serving biases
experiment
JEL: 
C91
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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