Another avenue for anatomy of income comparisons: Evidence from hypothetical choice experiments

Abstract

We propose a new avenue for studying income comparisons effects, namely hypothetical discrete choice experiments in which respondents are presented with alternative combinations of hypothetical monthly income amounts, both for themselves and certain reference persons. With this experimental method we can avoid the problems associated with researcher-imposed reference persons’ incomes that are found in most of the happiness studies testing comparison effects. This approach allows investigation of the differences in comparison effects across types of reference groups as well as respondents’ individual characteristics, including specific comparison benchmarks, which are the main open questions in the literature. Some results from our original, large-scale, Internet-based survey are provided.