DT 04-23 The positionality of goods and the positional concern's origin

We conducted a survey-experimental on a sample of Uruguayan youth to understand what goods are positional, the degree of positional concern, and possible explanations for them. The individual’s degree of positional concern was assessed by asking participants to make a series of choices between hypothetical societies characterized by varying absolute and relative income and consumption levels.
We use randomized information treatments to prime participants into competing narratives regarding (i) the goods, (ii) gender, and (iii) sources of inequality in society. The main findings are: (1) the visibility of the goods would not be a necessary condition for their positionality: jewelry, cars, and health insurance are positional goods and; (2) relative income matters; (3) the positional concern is heterogeneous at the individuals level with a bimodal distribution: one group of individuals has a high prevalence of relative concern, while the other is positional-neutral; (4) there are no differences by gender in any case; and (5) individuals are less likely to report positional concerns when differences in income come from effort and inheritance.