Allocation criteria under task performance : the gendered preference for protection Working papers

We device a randomized experiment with task performance in which players directly decide as spectators/shareholders allocation criteria under ignorance or not of payoff distributions. Our main result is a strong and significant gender effect: women choose significantly more protection (that is, they choose criteria in which a part or all the total sum of money that must be allocated among participants is equally distributed) before (but not after) knowing the payoff distributions. They also reveal less overconfidence and significantly higher civicness and inequality aversion in ex post questionnaire responses. The gendered preference for protection exists not only for stakeholders but also for spectators while it disappears for both once payoff distributions are known. This makes it impossible to explain it exclusively with risk or competition aversion, while inequality aversion with ex ante overestimation of the variance of payoff distribution is consistent with our findings. JEL code: C91, D63, J16