Heterogeneity of social welfare preferences and sustainable development: could data help to measure relation?

Oksana Liashenko, María Ángeles Caraballo Pou

Анотація

However, some countries rapidly transform into sustainable societies due to their specific strategies. Consequently, we hypothesise that social welfare preferences (SWP) are strongly related to social development and affect countries' prospects for achieving sustainable development goals (SDG). Nevertheless, traditional economic models assume self-interest as one of the most relevant motivations of agents involved in decision-making and that social motives only have a limited impact. This statement contrasts with the results of bargaining and cooperation experiments and the evidence gathered by the international surveys (Artero & Caraballo 2023). This phenomenon explains the emergence of a large body of scientific work on «social preferences» that attempts to include altruism, aversion to inequality, and concern for efficiency in analysing human decision-making processes. Although self-interest influences individuals' decisions to a degree, some research suggests that concerns about social welfare likewise figure prominently in decisions made across various situations