I Dont Want to Hear About it: Rational Ignorance among Morally Motivated Consumers

Individuals with a preference for keeping moral obligations may have an incentive to avoid information indicating that voluntary contributions are socially valuable. The reason is that such information can increase these individuals’perceived burden of responsibility. An increase in the believed social value of contributions a¤ects neither behavior nor the utility of Homo Economicus and of the Standard Impure Altruist. It increases both contributions and utility of a Consequentialist Impure Altruist. For the Duty-Oriented morally motivated individual, however, such a change in beliefs may increase contributions, but decrease utility. Unlike the Consequentialist Impure Altruist, the Duty-Oriented person thus has no incentive to seek this kind of information on his own initiative. Hence, information campaigns may increase voluntary contributions by providing unwanted information to the Duty-Oriented. JEL codes: D11, D62, D64, D89, H41, Q21. Keywords: Voluntary contributions, public goods, responsibility, altruism, information campaigns, cognitive dissonance. Acknowlegdement: I am grateful to the Research Council of Norway for funding through the SAMSTEMT/RENERGI programmes, and to Michael Rauscher and Anniken Greve for helpful comments to an earlier version. Part of this research was conducted during my participation in the project “Environmental economics: policy instruments, technology development, and international cooperation”conducted at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo in 2005. The …nancial, administrative and professional support of CAS is much appreciated. Address: Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, Gaustadalléen 21, N-0349 Oslo, Norway. E-mail: [email protected].