Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/308417 
Year of Publication: 
2024
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 11521
Publisher: 
CESifo GmbH, Munich
Abstract: 
Contrary to the traditional economic view that individuals misreport private information to maximize material payoffs, recent evidence highlights robust preferences for truth-telling among many decision-makers. Theoretical models that align with aggregate behavioral patterns posit that these preferences arise from both an intrinsic motivation to be honest and a desire to be perceived as honest. We propose a novel incentivized measure to independently capture these two motives at the individual level for the first time. We validate the measure's properties experimentally and show that it predicts behavior in other commonly studied situations that allow for (dis)honesty. The measure enables the classification of individual preference types, revealing systematic heterogeneity and fairly stable type distributions across different samples. Additionally, we propose an experimentally validated 2-minute survey module that proxies both motives and predicts behavior in a typical reporting task. Including this module in a large panel, we offer first insights into how early-life experiences may shape preferences for being and being seen as honest.
Subjects: 
honesty
lying costs
social image concerns
intentions
individual preferences
JEL: 
C91
D01
D82
D91
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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