Perceptions of Fairness and Support for Inequality Policies: the Role of Responsibility

This project investigates how people incorporate responsibility in their fairness perceptions when evaluating income inequality. It aims to quantify the relative importance individuals place on two ideals of distributive justice: compensating for circumstances and properly rewarding the exercise of responsibility. The project further investigates how this influences their support for social spending under incomplete information, and their support of inequality-reducing policies in the Netherlands. By linking fairness perceptions under complete and incomplete information to policy preferences, the study offers novel insights into the mechanisms behind public attitudes toward economic inequality and policy design.