Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2019
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1086/707010
Abstract
Many argue that paying people for good behavior can crowd out beneficial motivations like altruism. But little is known about how financial incentives interact with harmful motivations like racial bias. Two randomized vignette studies test how financial incentives affect bias. The first experiment varies the race of a hypothetical patient in need of a kidney transplant (black or white), an incentive ($18,500 or none), and addition of a message appealing to altruism. Incentives encouraged donation but introduced a significant bias favoring white patients. The second experiment assesses willingness to donate to a patient (black or white) without an incentive and then introduces incentives varying in size ($3,000, $18,800, or $50,000) and source (charity, government, or patient’s own funds). Incentives encouraged donation but were significantly more effective in encouraging donation to white patients. Biasing effects are most pronounced for medium-sized incentives. Incentives may have an inadvertent biasing effect for altruistic behavior.
Disciplines
Banking and Finance Law | Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Economics | Law and Society
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Kristen Underhill,
Price and Prejudice: An Empirical Test of Financial Incentives, Altruism, and Racial Bias,
48
J. Legal Stud.
245
(2019).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/faculty_scholarship/2797
Price and Prejudice Appendix
Included in
Banking and Finance Law Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Economics Commons, Law and Society Commons
Comments
© 2019 by The University of Chicago.