Franziska Ziegelmeyer

Dissertation Topic
Parental Substitute Decision Making

Brief Description
Again and again, individuals decide situations in the name of other individuals - consciously and subconsciously, planned and unplanned. In these situations, it is the other individual who will carry the main consequences of the decision.
Based on the individual decision, in which the choice among possible alternatives is decided by certain factors (intertemporality, risk, cost assessment), this dissertation project studies how identical decisions which are influenced by these factors, change based on the switching of roles between individual and substitute.
The thesis uses specific economic experiments to answer the research question, in which the individual is placed in the situation requiring a decision that is being researched and is required to make both decisions for themselves and for others.
The economic experiments are completed with parents of kindergarteners and primary school children due to the high social and political relevance of this group in context with early childhood education, as well as the favorable methodical conditions. Parents are confronted with simple and clearly defined decisions, in which they make choices based on their own preferences. Thereby, it is possible to learn more about how parents make decisions for their children and which behaviors factor in to which decisions.