Selfishness and Altruism in the Distribution of Travel Time and Income

Most economic models assume that individuals act out their preferences based on self-interest alone. However, there have also been other paradigms in economics that aim to capture aspects of behavior that include fairness, reciprocity, and altruism. In this study we empirically examine preferences of travel time and income distributions with and without the respondent knowing their own position in each distribution. The data comes from a Stated Preference experiment where subjects were presented paired alternative distributions of travel time and income. The alternatives require a tradeoff between distributional concerns and the respondent’s own position. Choices also do not penalize or reward any particular choice. Overall, choices show individuals are willing forgo alternatives where they would be individually well off in the interest of distribu-tional concerns in both the travel time and income cases. Exclusively self-interested choices are seen more in the income questions, where nearly 25 % of respondents ex-press such preferences, than in the travel time case, where only 5 % of respondents make such choices. The results also suggest that respondents prioritize their own posi