WIASSS

Effective policy making cannot ignore people’s acceptance of and reactions to inequality – and hence their underlying attitudes towards it. An in-depth understanding of the structure and drivers of inequality attitudes is thus essential. However, while behavioural economics has explored the attitudes of stakeholders, who have a direct interest in outcomes, and of spectators, who make decisions about inequality from an external perspective, little is known about the relationship between these stances. Moreover, people often don’t find themselves in either stance. Consumers informed about the inequality associated with each product are neither as involved as stakeholders nor as powerful as the spectators in typical studies – they are (potential) subscribers. But they may exhibit attitudes towards inequality, through their willingness to pay a premium for goods associated with reduced inequality. The subscriber stance thus highlights significant gaps in current knowledge about inequality attitudes while opening new opportunities. This project will fill the former, by providing a comprehensive, empirically grounded understanding of inequality attitudes and their drivers across the three stances, building a common model that can situate different types of agents. It will marshal the latter, taking the study of inequality attitudes to real-world settings, notably as concerns the subscriber stance. To achieve the first objective, the project will conduct large-scale, cross-country incentivized survey experiments guided by prior model development, using cutting-edge techniques to elicit inequality attitudes and perception in the three stances. For the second objective, a randomized controlled trial will investigate the behaviour of consumers when informed about the inequality involved in the production of each good. The findings will have substantial policy implications, offering insights relevant to the design and invention of successful and acceptable inequality policies.