PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

Large-scale population surveys predominantly rely on interviewer-assisted data collection. Furthermore, the use of incentives is becoming common practice in survey research to increase response rates. The focus of the present paper is on how these two structural conditions of an interview situation influence the stated preferences for a more or less equal income distribution in society. According to goal-framing theory (GFT) and the findings of empirical justice research, different goal frames are activated in different types of relationships leading to different distributional preferences: a normative goal frame results in a stronger preference for equality in cooperative situations and a gain frame favors inequality in competitive situations. The assumption is that the former type of relationship is established by the presence of an interviewer, the latter by incentivizing in a survey. Two experimental studies were designed to test our hypotheses. The results suggest that generating a collaborative relationship through interviewer presence and cooperation priming leads to a preference for equality in comparison to a neutral, competitive, or exchange situation using competitive priming techniques or incentives.