The Bright Side of Inequity Aversion
研究了消费者对交易公平性的关注（不平等厌恶）如何影响从上游供应商采购的制造商，发现当消费者不了解制造商成本且制造商从多个供应商采购时，不平等厌恶能缓解双重边际化问题，实现供应商、制造商和消费者三方共赢。
Modern consumers are concerned about not only their material payoff, but also the fairness of the transaction when making purchasing decisions. In this paper, we investigate how consumers’ inequity aversion affects a manufacturer who sources inputs from upstream suppliers. We find that, when the manufacturer sources from a single supplier or when consumers observe the manufacturer’s cost, inequity aversion hurts both the supplier’s and manufacturer’s profits. However, when the manufacturer sources from multiple suppliers and consumers do not observe the manufacturer’s cost, inequity aversion reduces both the suppliers’ and manufacturer’s margins, which significantly alleviates the double marginalization problem, increases consumer demand, and improves channel efficiency. As a result, inequity aversion benefits the suppliers, manufacturer, and consumers alike, leading to a “win–win–win” outcome. By comparing cases in which consumers observe and do not observe the manufacturer’s cost, we also find that, when faced with inequity-averse consumers, a manufacturer may find it optimal to withhold its cost information to help secure lower procurement costs from upstream suppliers. This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing. Funding: This work was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council [Grant 21500920].