The Value of Verbal Feedback in Allocation Decisions [Online Appendix and Replication Package]

DOI

Depending on the context at hand, people’s preference for receiving feedback might differ. Especially in allocation decisions that directly concern another individual, feedback from the affected person can have positive or negative value. We study such preferences in a laboratory experiment by eliciting the willingness-to-pay to receive or to avoid verbal feedback from subjects that were previously affected by an allocation decision. We find that most decision makers exhibit a positive willingness-to-pay for having control about whether feedback occurs or not. Specifically, decision makers that shared their endowment with the recipient equally revealed a positive willingness-to-pay for receiving, but not for avoiding feedback. By contrast, among decision makers that behaved selfishly, we identify both: subjects that were willing to pay for receiving and subjects that were willing to pay for avoiding feedback. The stated motivations indicate that curiosity, the desire to receive social approval and giving the recipient the chance to express his/her feelings are the main reasons for feedback acquisition, while shame and fear of negative feedback are the main reasons for avoidance.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.11588/data/R1CRC4
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2020.101548
Metadata Access https://heidata.uni-heidelberg.de/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.11588/data/R1CRC4
Provenance
Creator Schmidt, Robert; Schwieren, Christiane; Vollmann, Martin
Publisher heiDATA
Contributor Schwieren, Christiane; heiDATA: Heidelberg Research Data Repository
Publication Year 2020
Rights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
OpenAccess true
Contact Schwieren, Christiane (Alfred-Weber-Institute of Economics, Heidelberg University, Germany)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/octet-stream; application/vnd.ms-excel; text/plain; application/x-stata-syntax; image/bmp; text/tab-separated-values; application/pdf; application/msword
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Version 1.1
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences