PPE postdoc Pei-Hsun Hsieh has published new research, ‘Deservingness heuristics drive redistributive choices, but weights on recipient effort vary’, in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, examining individuals’ preferences for income redistribution

To test the model’s predictions, Hsieh conducted experiments in which participants redistributed earnings from a real-effort task. The results revealed three main types of redistributive preferences: those highly responsive to others’ effort, those less responsive, and those primarily self-interested. The theoretical model explains these differences by varying the weight individuals place on recipients’ effort, offering insight into how people judge who is “deserving.”

The study shows that while individuals generally share core motives—such as helping those in need and rewarding effort—they differ in how strongly they prioritize each. This work contributes to a deeper understanding of the psychological foundations of redistributive preferences. Read the open-access paper here.