Public Sector Employees: Risk Averse and Altruistic?

By Margaretha Buurman, Josse Delfgaauw, Robert Dur, Seth N. J. van den Bossche. Social Science Research Network, 2012

223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We assess whether public sector employees have a stronger inclination to serve others and are more risk averse than employees in the private sector. A unique feature of our study is that we use revealed rather than stated preferences data. Respondents of a large-scale survey were offered a substantial reward and could choose between a widely redeemable gift certificate, a lottery ticket, or making a donation to a charity. Our analysis shows that public sector employees are significantly less likely to choose the risky option (lottery) and, at the start of their career, significantly more likely to choose the pro-social option (charity). However, when tenure increases, this difference in pro-social inclinations disappears and, later on, even reverses. Our results further suggest that quite a few public sector employees do not contribute to charity because they feel that they already contribute enough to society at work for too little pay.

Subfields: General Decision Sciences, Public Administration, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2277c53936b5ce6551de710c5d7d27a6ee86b4f

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Decision Sciences

1. Shing-Yi B. Wang
2. Rema Hanna

In Public Administration

1. A. Arundel
2. B. Ferguson
3. Carter Bloch
4. Fred Gault

In Safety Research

1. Shing-Yi B. Wang
2. Rema Hanna
3. Guido W. Imbens

Citations in the corpus

• Advancing innovation in the public sector: Aligning innovation measurement with policy goals (2019, background): “Risk-averse conditions can be created by political damage to elected officials from media scrutiny of failed policies (Albury, 2005; Borins, 2001; Potts and Kastelle, 2010), reputational risks for managers (Pärna and von Tunzelmann, 2007) and self-selection effects whereby risk-averse individuals ar”
• Dishonesty and Selection into Public Service: Evidence from India (2017, background): “6 The inclusion of P i in the utility that individuals get from public service draws on the growing literature that suggests that intrinsic motivation and social preferences may be important for public service workers (Delfgauuw and Dur 2008; Francois 2000; Gregg et al. 2011; Buurman et al. 2012).”