Judgments concerning Zero Inputs in Equity Situations

According to equal ratio or proportionality formulations of justice as equity, a person who contributes nothing should receive nothing. However, an inconsistency in this formulation is that equity judgments seem to be influenced by information regarding causal responsibility. It was hypothesized that within this conception of equity, when opportunities to perform inputs are curtailed, zero inputs may be disregarded in favor of best guess hypothetical inputs based on previous input history. British subjects were given vignettes in which one worker's input was 10 hr, another's was 5 hr, and a third worker's input was nothing. Information regarding the zero input worker's opportunity to work and previous work history were systematically varied, and the subjects were required to assign wages to each worker. Some support was found for the hypothesis.