Subjective utilitarianism: Individual decisions in a social context

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Alon, Shiri; Lehrer, Ehud
• 署名单位: Bar Ilan University; Tel Aviv University; INSEAD Business School
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2020.105108
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: Other-regarding preferences; Subjective utilitarianism; Social context; Axiomatization

摘要

Individual decisions are often subjectively affected by other-regarding considerations. We model a decision maker influenced by a grand group of significant others. Each sub-group of significant others is a possible social context, and the decision maker has different preferences in different social contexts. An axiomatic characterization of such preferences is offered. The characterized representation takes a simple subjective utilitarian form: (a) the decision maker ascribes to each significant other a utility function, representing the decision maker's subjective perception of this other person's tastes, and (b) in any specific social context the decision maker evaluates alternatives by adding together her or his own personal utility and the sum of all group members' utilities as subjectively perceived by the decision maker. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.