Efficiency for Lives, Equality for Everything Else: How Allocation Preference Shifts Across Domains

Abstract

The allocation of scarce public resources such as transplant organs and limited public funding involves a trade-off between equality—equal access and efficiency—maximizing total benefit. The current research explores how preferences shift when allocation decisions involve human lives versus when they do not. Fifteen experiments test this question using a variety of allocation scenarios including allocation of lifesaving medical aid, money, road construction, vaccines, and other resources. The results consistently show an increased preference for efficiency, when the allocation involves saving human lives, and equality, when the allocation involves outcomes with other consequences. We found no preference shift when stakes were manipulated in allocations where lives were not on the line, suggesting that the effect cannot be explained by lifesaving resources simply being higher stakes. These findings suggest a unique preference for efficiency for allocations involving life-and-death consequences that has implications for designing and conveying public resource allocation policies.