Heterogeneous preferences and collective action

In recent years, scholars have turned to alternative representations of utility to capture motivational heterogeneity across individuals. In the research reported here, we examine two models of heterogeneous utility - linear-altruism and inequity-aversion - in the context of two-person, social dilemma games. Empirical tests are conducted drawing on data from experiments and surveys. We find that the model of inequity-aversion accounts for a substantial proportion of the preference types and behavior that are not explained by the standard model of self-interested preferences. In contrast, the altruism model does not provide a significant increase in explanatory power over the inequity-aversion model.