The (In)Elasticity of Moral Ignorance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Serra-Garcia, Marta; Szech, Nora
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California San Diego; Helmholtz Association; Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2021.4153
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 4815-4834
• 关键词: Information avoidance; Morality; Unethical behavior; social norms; moral reminders; social nudges

摘要

Ignorance enables individuals to act immorally. This is well known in policy circles, in which there is keen interest in lowering moral ignorance. In this paper, we study how the demand for moral ignorance responds to monetary incentives and how the demand curve for ignorance reads to social norm messages. We propose a simple behavioral model in which individuals suffer moral costs when behaving selfishly in the face of moral information. In several experiments, we find that moral ignorance decreases by more than 30 percentage points with small monetary incentives, but we find no significant change with social norm messages, and we document strong persistence of ignorance across moral contexts. Our findings indicate that rather simple messaging interventions may have limited effects on ignorance. In contrast, changes in incentives could be highly effective.