Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment

Demel, Simona; Barr, Abigail; Miller, Luis; Ubeda, Paloma

Abstract

Using a political-frame-free, lab-in-the-field experiment, we investigate the associations between employment status, self-reported political ideology, and preferences for redistribution. The experiment consists of a real-effort task, followed by a four-player dictator game. In one treatment, dictator game initial endowments depend on participants’ performance in the real-effort task, i.e., they are earned, in the other, they are randomly determined. We find that being employed or unemployed is associated with revealed redistributive preferences, while the political ideology of the employed and unemployed is not. In contrast, the revealed redistributive preferences of students are strongly associated with their political ideologies. The employed and right-leaning students redistribute earnings less than windfalls, the unemployed and left-leaning students make no such distinction.

Citation

Demel, S., Barr, A., Miller, L., & Ubeda, P. (2019). Commitment to political ideology is a luxury only students can afford: a distributive justice experiment. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 6(1), 33-42. https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2018.14

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 31, 2018
• Online Publication Date: May 21, 2018
• Publication Date: 2019-03
• Deposit Date: Apr 13, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: May 21, 2018
• Journal: Journal of Experimental Political Science
• Print ISSN: 2052-2630
• Electronic ISSN: 2052-2649
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 33-42
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/XPS.2018.14
• Keywords: Economic status; Lab-in-the-field experiments; Left-right scale; Redistribution
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/933435
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/commitment-to-political-ideology-is-a-luxury-only-students-can-afford-a-distributive-justice-experiment/7BFBD0DB67852EB6949A0D5812A66664
• Additional Information: © Cambridge University Press 2018
• Contract Date: Apr 13, 2018