Beyond Procedural Equity and Reciprocity - An Experimental Study -

Research on individual concerns about procedural fairness has focussed on two aspects so far. First, on whether the mechanism determining an allocation matters when judging fairness, and second, on whether players’ intentions do so. This paper inquires to what extent procedural fairness can be defined in terms of reciprocity, that is, to which extent the fairness of a procedure may be expressed as the kindness of an opponent’s act of choosing that procedure when the choice was left to her. Subsequently, we experimentally explore subjects’ willingness to pay for changing the procedure when they expect intentions and outcomes to be equally fair across procedures. We thus rule out reciprocity motives and motives for equalizing expected payoffs. We show that individuals display procedural preferences beyond the reasons discovered so far. JEL Classification: C78, D63, Z13