Social Preferences Modeling in Experimental Economics: Introduction and Experimental Evaluation

There are wide ranges of evidence show that self-interest is not unique motivation in various games and experiments. Fairness, reciprocity, competition and altruism can take substantial role in some game. To explain contrary result of experiments some models arise by considering those motivations beside the selfishness. This study explores three types of these models. Two of them are based on fairness and last one supposes that subjects are surplus maximizer. A distributional experiment based on dictator game is established to explore models. Results show fairness motivation has main rule in subject’s choice in all treatments. However it is impossible to ignore self-interest and efficiency entirely.