Mol, J., Soraperra, I. and van der Weele, JoelJ. (2025). Spoiling the party: Experimental evidence on the willingness to transmit inconvenient ethical information Experimental Economics, :1--19.

Information about the consequences of our consumption choices can be unwelcome, and people sometimes avoid it. Thus, when people possess information that is inconvenient for another person, they may face a dilemma about whether to inform them. We introduce a simple and portable experimental game to analyze the transmission of inconvenient information. In this game, a Sender can, at a small cost, inform a Receiver about a negative externality associated with a tempting and profitable action for the Receiver. The results from our online experiment (N = 1,512) show that Senders transmit more information when negative externalities are larger and that Senders{\textquoteright} decisions are largely driven by their own preferences towards the charity and their own use of information. We do not find evidence that Senders take the Receiver{\textquoteright}s preferences into account, as they largely ignore explicit requests for information, or ignorance, even if Receivers have the option to punish the Sender.