Third‐Degree Price Discrimination with Fairness‐Concerned Consumers

Abstract

This paper studies monopolistic third-degree price discrimination, incorporating consumers' fairness concerns: discriminatory pricing antagonizes consumers and may reduce their demand. In contrast to the findings in previous studies, we show that consumers' concerns regarding price inequalities may deter discriminatory pricing by monopolists. Furthermore, a strong aversion to unfair pricing may improve social welfare compared with the situation in which consumers do not perceive price discrimination as unfair. Conversely, if the disutility from price inequality is not sufficiently large, social welfare decreases.