Spoiling the party: Experimental evidence on the willingness to transmit inconvenient ethical information

Abstract Information about the consequences of our consumption choices can be unwelcome, and people sometimes avoid it. Thus, when people possess information that is inconvenient for another person, they may face a dilemma about whether to inform them. We introduce a simple and portable experimental game to analyze the transmission of inconvenient information. In this game, a Sender can, at a small cost, inform a Receiver about a negative externality associated with a tempting and profitable action for the Receiver. The results from our online experiment (N = 1,512) show that Senders transmit more information when negative externalities are larger and that Senders’ decisions are largely driven by their own preferences towards the charity and their own use of information. We do not find evidence that Senders take the Receiver’s preferences into account, as they largely ignore explicit requests for information, or ignorance, even if Receivers have the option to punish the Sender.