94% of researchers rate our articles as excellent or good
Learn more about the work of our research integrity team to safeguard the quality of each article we publish.
Find out more
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Medical Sociology
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1570940
Fair allocation of resources in the moral dilemma of triage
Provisionally accepted- 1Department Health and Prevention, Institute of Psychology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- 2Institute of Sociology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Against the background of the COVID-19 pandemic that has shaken societies around the world, the debate about fairness of medical allocation decisions is gaining momentum. Studying a sample of a broad international public (N = 1,998), we investigate citizens' ethical preferences in the moral dilemma of triage decisions. First, we address the key problem of which of several contradictory ethical criteria and normative principles should be used to determine the fairness of outcomes in triage situations. Preferences about fair outcomes are inferred from observed allocation decisions in a conjoint experiment. Second, preferences in regard to fair procedures are measured via fairness ratings of a series of triage procedures. Third, we analyze the relationship between the observed allocation outcomes and the fairness ratings of procedures. Finally, we review the current expert discourse and reflect it with the citizens ethical preferences observed in our study.
Keywords: Triage, allocation, Preferences, fairness, Conjoint experiment
Received: 04 Feb 2025; Accepted: 16 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Keßler and Krumpal. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ivar Krumpal, Institute of Sociology, Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.