Effect of multiple referent information on perception of distributive justice

According to equity theory, perception of distributive justice is determined by referent. Based on social comparison theory, the referent information can be organized into three categories: information of average (IA); information of better paid referent (IB); and information of worse paid referent (IW). For the purpose of testing the effect of multiple referent information on the perception of d distributive justice, a 4times2times2 random-designed scenario experiment was adopted in the present study. The empirical results indicated that (a) the main effect of IA was significant; (b) the bandwagon effect was significant in any condition: when subjects get IB, their perception of distributive justice decreased sharply; (c) the snob effect was significant under the condition that IA was absent only: when subjects get IW, their perception of distributive justice increased dramatically. Based on the findings, the theoretical and empirical implications of this study were discussed and speculative future prospects were briefly reviewed as well.