A prominent explanation of widespread popular support for referendums is dissatisfaction with the functioning of representative democracy. In this article, the aim is to gain a better understanding of how dissatisfaction affects support for referendums. Drawing on previous research, it is argued here that citizens follow a problem‐based approach in their support for referendums, in that referendums are considered a suitable solution to address some specific problems in a political system but not all. Survey data from the 2012 European Social Survey (29 countries; N = 37,070) is used to show that citizens’ expectations towards and evaluations of representatives relate to support for referendums. In particular, dissatisfaction with the ability of governments to listen to their citizens is associated with higher support for referendums. In contrast, citizens dissatisfied with the government's ability to lead are less supportive of referendums. Furthermore, the relationship between dissatisfaction with governments’ ability to listen varies across countries depending on the level of experience with decision making via referendum. In countries where referendums are used more often, the expectation of referendums being able to solve the problem of unresponsive government is weaker. This study offers important insights into the different ways in which preferences and evaluations of representative practices relate to popular support for referendums.

Explanations of different patterns of preferences for redistribution either highlight the role of the institutional framework in a country or highlight the importance of self‐interest and rational expectations. The study introduces a unified approach to explain differences in preferences for redistributive measures for the case of intergenerational monetary transfers for families and children. Both explanatory approaches are integrated into the action‐based Model of Frame Selection that incorporates normative motives and economic self‐interest into the process of decision making. Using a large sample that deals with questions on the approval of public policies for families and accounts for the normative importance of children and family life in Germany, evidence is provided that both approaches are valid in explaining preferences for government transfers.

The article analyses the various logics of different types of decision-making processes: war, strategic bargaining, deliberative negotiation, deliberation, voting, trial, investigation and subsumption. The logics specify relationships between decision situations or constellations of preferences, the character and results of the processes, and problems that may arise. Furthermore, the article presents typical decision-makers and arenas, the bases of legitimacy, and political systems where the respective forms of decision-making are dominant.

Using data from 74 countries, we uncover important differences in the association between financial literacy and preferences by the level of economic development. Patience is salient and positively associated to financial literacy in wealthier countries, i.e., countries with GDP per capita above the sample median. This association is not driven by a multitude of institutional or cultural factors known to be related to financial literacy. In impoverished countries, we document a higher level of financial literacy in countries with higher levels of risk-taking but lower levels of trust, positive reciprocity, and altruism. Countries’ legal origin drives most of the association with risk-taking, trust, and positive reciprocity while their religious composition drives the association between altruism and financial knowledge. Our findings underscore that financial education programs need to be tailored to the cultural aspect of group preferences and suggest what type of traits policies and programs ought to be reinforced in poorer countries.

Based on a representative sample of the French population (n = 1,154), we show that there is a positive association between risk tolerance and trust. We rely on, the World Value Survey WVS binary trust measure, and a ‘0 − 10’ scale that we decline in three domains: trust in general, family, and co-workers. We also vary the measure of risk tolerance, by considering an incentivized investment task, and a ‘0 − 10’ stated preference scale that we decline in three domains: risk tolerance in general, in finance, and health. These variations allow us to test 16 different relations, by crossing four dependent trust variables with four different risk tolerance covariates. After adjusting for multiple testing, we found nine combinations with a strong positive link between risk tolerance and trust in the general population, and that stated risk tolerance measures predict stated trust better than elicited risk measures.

This paper proposes a conceptual model of decision-making tying specific preferences to broader individual goals. Specifically, we consider terminal goals, representing fundamental objectives, and instrumental goals, serving as complexity-reducing intermediate steps toward achieving terminal goals and determining eventual preferences. Notably, the hierarchical goal structure allows for contextual misalignments between different instrumental goals, which may lead to suboptimal decisions – as evaluated from an outside perspective. Thus, applied to the discussion about nudging and paternalism, the model provides a methodological justification for paternalistic interventions as it is compatible with arguments in favour of interventions aimed to correct such choices.

How did the COVID-19 outbreak affect citizens’ democratic preferences? Were the changes persistent or temporary? We track a representative sample of Spanish citizens before, during, and after the pandemic, with eight survey waves from January 2020 to January 2024. We compare democratic attitudes before and after the pandemic with individual fixed effects models. We identify a sharp increase in preferences for technical rather than ideological policy-making at the very onset of the pandemic, as well as significant changes in voters’ preferences for competent rather than honest politicians. These changes are sudden and persistent over 4 years. Using a set of repeated survey experiments, we also document a widespread willingness to sacrifice rights and freedoms to deal with the pandemic as compared to other global threats, such as international terrorism and climate change. But this effect quickly faded over time. Overall, we identify significant changes in democratic attitudes during the pandemic and a durable shift in technocratic preferences that outlived the pandemic, setting the conditions for the long-term legacies of COVID-19 on democracy.

This paper investigates public attitudes towards education spending based on a survey experiment. It enquires whether a trade-off between education and other welfare domains, namely healthcare, unemployment benefits and pensions, diminishes support for higher public spending on education. Drawing on five Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, Mexico and Turkey), the paper demonstrates that education spending preferences are contingent on the nature of trade-offs and the priorities of the stakeholder groups. Testing the predictive power of age, income, ideology, labour market positioning and gender, our research finds robust support for public spending on education across all countries. Nonetheless, this support diminishes significantly when trade-offs that are linked to cuts in other welfare domains are introduced.

People with disabilities face barriers to employment compared to people without disabilities, including the way in which employment opportunities are structured. The COVID-19 pandemic has opened up new ways of working (e.g. working from home), which have been trialled in a number of different locations, and these have the potential to widen employment opportunities for people with disabilities. It is therefore important to explore the extent to which job preferences differ between people with disabilities and people without disabilities, in particular for aspects such as teleworking. In total, 253 participants (62 male and 191 female) took part in a discrete choice experiment (DCE) that investigates participants’ preferences for various job aspects. These include discretionary medical leave, flexible scheduling, working from home, and the availability of part-time jobs. People with disabilities significantly prefer flexible scheduling and the availability of part-time jobs compared to people without disabilities. The results of a latent class analysis suggest it is older women with disabilities in particular, who most value increased flexible job design. An analysis of lexicographic preferences suggests that it is people who are most constrained by ‘traditional’ working conditions who benefit the most from increased flexibility, e.g. people who require teleworking or flexible scheduling. This suggests that wider adoption of these attributes by employers has the potential to go some way towards addressing the persistent disability employment gaps and related health inequalities observed in many countries around the world.

For all their differences, the two rival theories of human behavior have many unfortunate similarities. Standard rational choice theory posits that individuals use rational techniques to pick ends that meet their set of private preferences. Modern theories of behavioral economics point to systematic deviations from those principles. Both approaches assume that all preferences are individually based. However, the evolutionary principle of inclusive fitness insists that in family situations, it is the welfare of the unit, not of any of single individual, that explains various forms of natural love and affection that arise because of the interdependence of − and the redistribution of − wealth it requires. Likewise, both standard theories ignore variations in tastes and in competence levels that allow for gains from trade across competence levels. This paper then reinterprets the common treatment of nudges and the various legal doctrines dealing with disabilities, product liability, and firm structure where the standard assumptions of uniform behavior miss the salient features of human behavior and social interactions.

Empirical studies of ambiguity aversion mostly use artificial events such as Ellsberg urns to control for unknown probability beliefs. The present study measures ambiguity attitudes using real-world events in a large sample of investors. We elicit ambiguity aversion and perceived ambiguity for a familiar company stock, a local stock index, a foreign stock index, and Bitcoin. Measurement reliability is higher than for artificial sources in previous studies. Ambiguity aversion is highly correlated for different assets, while perceived ambiguity varies more between assets. Further, we show that ambiguity attitudes are related to actual investment choices.

We show how bounds around preferences parameters can be estimated under various levels of assumptions concerning the beliefs of senders in the investment game. We contrast these bounds with point estimates of the preference parameters obtained using non-incentivized subjective belief data. Our point estimates suggest that expected responses and social preferences both play a significant role in determining investment in the game. Moreover, these point estimates fall within our most reasonable bounds. This suggests that credible inferences can be obtained using non-incentivized beliefs.

This paper critically assesses Rizzo and Whitman’s theory of inclusive rationality in light of the ongoing cross-disciplinary debate about rationality, welfare analyses and policy evaluation. The paper aims to provide three main contributions to this debate. First, it explicates the relation between the consistency conditions presupposed by standard axiomatic conceptions of rationality and the standards of rationality presupposed by Rizzo and Whitman’s theory of inclusive rationality. Second, it provides a qualified defence of the consistency conditions presupposed by standard axiomatic conceptions of rationality against the main criticisms put forward by Rizzo and Whitman. And third, it identifies and discusses specific strengths and weaknesses of Rizzo and Whitman’s theory of inclusive rationality in the context of welfare analyses and policy evaluation.

This article surveys the rapidly growing literature that examined the influence of Covid-19 on preferences. Based on 33 studies, the article examines how the pandemic impacted altruism, cooperation, trust, inequity aversion, risk-taking, and patience/time discounting. Even though the survey suggests the effect of the pandemic on preferences is heterogeneous, some noticeable patterns can be observed in the literature. First, in the case of incentivized preference elicitation, there is weak evidence that the pandemic positively influenced altruism and had no significant impact on time preferences or patience. Second, many studies that used balanced panel data and incentivized preference elicitation mechanisms do not find a significant effect of the pandemic on preferences. Last, studies that used unincentivized methods to elicit preferences show relatively higher variability in results when compared to the studies that used incentivized methods for preference elicitation. The organized synthesis and several noticeable patterns can help future research focusing on preference stability during Covid-19 and other unfavorable events.

This article replicates an experiment by Coffman et al. (Manag Sci 67(6):3551–3569, 2021) who separated taste-based and statistical discrimination by comparing employer choices in one of two hiring environments (treatments). Both treatments were characterized by the same ability distributions of workers in tasks on which men are found to outperform women on average, but only one allowed for gender-specific considerations. We found statistical discrimination against women when they are presented to employers not as women, but as people belonging to a low-performance group, but discrimination in their favor when their gender is revealed to potential employers. This discrimination in favor of women was observed in both male and female employers. It was greater when employers were women and disappeared when monetary incentives to employ more productive workers were higher for employers.

If stimulus responses are linearly related to squared distances between stimulus scale values and person scores along a latent continuum, (a) the stimulus × stimulus correlation matrix will display a simplex-like pattern, (b) the signs of first-order partial correlations can be specified in an empirically testable manner, and (c) the variables will have a semicircular, two-factor structure. Along the semicircle, variables will be ordered by their positions on the latent dimension. The above results suggest procedures for examining the appropriateness of the model and procedures for ordering the stimuli. Applications to developmental and attitudinal data are discussed.

Reduced exposure to sweet taste has been proposed to reduce sweet food preferences and intakes, but the evidence to support these associations is limited. This randomised controlled trial investigated the effects of a whole-diet sweet taste intervention for 6 d, on subsequent pleasantness, desire for and sweet food intakes. Participants (n 104) were randomised to increase (n 40), decrease (n 43) or make no change to (n 21) their consumption of sweet-tasting foods and beverages for 6 consecutive days. Pleasantness, desire to eat, sweet taste intensity and sweet food and beverage intakes were assessed on days 0 and 7. One hundred and two (98 %) participants completed the study, and self-reported adherence with the dietary interventions was moderate to good (M = 66–72/100 mm), with instructions to decrease sweet food consumption reported as more difficult than the other diets (smallest (t(81) = 2·45, P = 0·02, Mdiff = 14/100 mm, se = 2 mm). In intention-to-treat analyses, participants in the decreased sweet food consumption group reported higher sweet taste intensity perceptions at day 7 compared with day 0 (F(2101) = 4·10, P = 0·02, Mdiff = 6/100 mm, se = 2 mm). No effects were found for pleasantness (F(2101) = 2·04, P = 0·14), desire to eat (F(2101) = 1·49, P = 0·23) or any of the measures of sweet food intake (largest F(2101) = 2·53, P = 0·09). These results were confirmed in regression analyses that took self-reported adherence to the diets into account. Our findings suggest that exposure to sweet taste does not affect pleasantness, desire for or intakes of sweet-tasting foods and beverages. Public health recommendations to limit the consumption of sweet-tasting foods and beverages to reduce sweet food preferences may require revision.