A THERORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL STUDY OF DETERMINANTS IN DECISION-MAKING PROCESS

A large body of experimental studies highlights the existence of social motivations besides self-interest in decision-making process. This paper proposes and tests new extensions of the well-known social preferences model of Fehr & Schmidt (1999). Extensions mainly concern the introduction of opponents ’ payoffs differences and a simple element of reciprocity. We run an experiment on a three-player dictator-ultimatum game to collect data and to underline subjects’ behaviors in such context. Thereafter we use collected data to estimate fixed-effects logit models in order to test the relevance of proposed extensions and to compare the predictive success of the model of Fehr & Schmidt and the extended model. Results highlight a strong influence of intentions and opponents ’ payoffs differences. The latter doesn’t display a sense of fairness but rather the desire to protect themselves and to maximise their own payoff