Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Sociology

Sub-Department

College of Arts and Sciences

First Advisor

Barry Markovsky

Second Advisor

Brent Simpson

Abstract

Provision of public goods often requires sufficient contributions from group members, and improper contributions are likely to produce feelings of injustice. Building on previous research, I develop a justice theory that explains how framing social comparisons in particular ways will make actors more or less sensitive and reactive to departures from fair contributions. In turn, this is predicted to impact justice-restoring behaviors such as reducing subsequent contributions to a public good, punishing group members, or exiting the group. This integrated theory shows how varying the way key pieces of information are framed affects fairness perceptions and subsequent behaviors in social dilemma settings as well as a broader contribution and/or reward settings. By integrating theories of distributive justice and literature on framing the following dissertation aims to better understand the perceptual, emotional, and behavioral effects of socially constructed frames on behavior public goods dilemma situations.

The proposed theory is mathematically formalized and utilized to generate logically connected assumptions and derivations. The key terms, assumptions, and derivations are operationalized through the testable hypotheses aiming to measure variations in justice evaluations and justice restoring behaviors across different theoretical conditions. The hypotheses are tested in a hypothetical vignette and a standard laboratory-based public goods setting.

Rights

© 2017, Hatice Atilgan

Included in

Sociology Commons

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