Information, Counter-Messaging, and the Shape of Moral Values

• In Event: The Politics of Morality

Abstract

We experimentally measure moral preferences by eliciting changes in willingness to pay for a commodity after exposure to information (and counter-information) about the harm associated with the commodity (animal welfare). We find that making the moral harm salient significantly reduces willingness to pay for consumption and increases the self-perceived moral harm of the commodity. Counter-information partially offsets these effects. We characterize the type of moral reasoning into individual behavior that is consistent with marginalist utilitarian values versus deontological values, and, typologize the population based on the implied shape of one's moral cost function. We also measure willingness to pay for the information about the moral harm and, separately, for the counter-information. This allows for the characterization of a full system of both commodity and information demand, and, thereby, the comparison of counterfactual policies to reduce commodity consumption through direct changes to the commodity price (traditional pecuniary taxes), or, instead, through changes to the price of information (and, thus, the corresponding psychic tax)

Author

• Emiliano Raphael Huet-Vaughn, Pomona College