Interregional diversity of fairness concerns –An online ultimatum experiment

Does geographic distance or the perceived social distance between subjects significantlyaffect proposer and responder behavior in ultimatum bargaining? To answer this question,subjects play a one-shot ultimatum game with three players (proposer, responder, and apassive dummy player) and asymmetric information (only the proposer knows what can bedistributed). Treatments differ in their geographic scope by involving either one or threedifferent locations in Germany. Observed behavior reflects the robust stylized facts of thisclass of ultimatum experiments and can be adequately explained by other-regarding preferences.While responder behavior does not condition on co-players’ location of residence,self-interest of proposers varies significantly with the latter. Altogether, we do not detectstrong discrimination based on geographic distance.