TY - JOUR
TI - The Identified Victim Effect - Utilitarian Analysis and Policy Recommendations
AU - Kłusek, Michał
TI - The Identified Victim Effect - Utilitarian Analysis and Policy Recommendations
AB - 
	The identified victim effect refers to a psychological bias of a much greater willingness to help identified victims, as opposed to statistical ones. The aim of this article is to assess what we morally ought to do in the light of this effect, from the point of view of utilitarian ethics. What decision-making rule ought to be established? Ought we to always help identified victims or statistical ones? I argue for a rule that constitutes a middle ground between the two extremes. Next, using the example of the Polish non-governmental sector and with the rule in mind, I outline legal changes that would result in a much higher overall net utility. The first change concerns the rules of the so-called percentage tax designation mechanism. The second concerns the conditions NGOs have to meet in order to receive public funding of their activities.

	The research on this article was funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland, National Program for the Development of Humanities, no. 0068/NPRH4/H2b/83/2016. 
VL - 2018
IS - Volume 65
PY - 2018
SN - 0867-5392
C1 - 2084-3887
SP - 69
EP - 89
DO - 10.4467/20843887PI.18.003.9886
UR - https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/principia/article/the-identified-victim-effect-utilitarian-analysis-and-policy-recommendations
KW - identified victim
KW - statistical victim
KW - utilitarianism
KW - non-governmental sector
KW - percentage tax designation