Does scarcity matter in children's behavior? A developmental perspective of the basic scarcity bias

Abstract

The bias generated by the subjective perception of scarcity on economic behavior was investigated on two groups of children aged 9-10 and 12-14 years old and on a sample of adults. Children had to choose a toy among a set of identical objects varying only in color: one color was scarce the other abundant. Color was counterbalanced across conditions. Younger children showed a basic scarcity bias: they preferred systematically the toy that was scarce in color. In older children however this tendency disappeared and was reversed in adults. The results are coherent with a developmental explanation of the basic scarcity bias which tends to be present at early stages of cognitive development but gets weaker and is substituted by other strategies and social schema as the individual develops and accumulates experience.

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