Eliciting paternalistic preferences : an incentivised experiment

Individual paternalistic preferences are central to the question to what extent the state may intervene in the freedom of choice of its citizens. Albeit its practical and theoretical importance, there is yet no incentivised tool to elicit those preferences. In this paper, we present a simple and abstract experiment to elicit paternalistic preferences and also investigate its relationship with individual psychological constructs that are argued to correlate with paternalistic preferences. In line with previous empirical results, our experimental data suggest that paternalistic preferences are indeed heterogeneously distributed in our sample. Moreover, we identify outcome related and autonomy related motives as important factors of paternalistic preferences. More precisely, (especially young) individuals with a strong desire for autonomy are more likely to opt for an informed choice and individuals with a strong focus on the outcome are more likely to opt for an uninformed choice than giving up their autonomy.