When Do Individuals Give Up Agency? The Role of Decision Avoidance

A common policy problem is that individuals reject recommended options and insist on making their own choices. Via a large-scale experiment, we document and investigate what factors contribute to this preference for agency. Our main results show that individuals’ willingness to give up their agency increases when they are less determined about what they would choose. Additional results suggest that this is because when they are less determined about what they would choose, forgoing agency allows them to avoid making decisions. ∗Holly Dykstra: Harvard Kennedy School; dykstra@g.harvard.edu; Christine L. Exley: Harvard Business School, clexley@hbs.edu; Muriel Niederle: Stanford University, SIEPR and NBER, niederle@stanford.edu.