Losers and winners: what people think about contested-commodity transactions

Abstract Contested commodities such as kidneys, surrogate pregnancies, or sex work raise questions about whether these exchanges improve people’s lives or cause harm. We address this issue by examining how U.S. participants perceive changes in buyers’ and sellers’ welfare resulting from contested‑commodity transactions. Across both contested and non‑contested commodities, respondents predominantly evaluated exchanges through a zero‑sum lens – assuming that one party gains at the other’s expense. Despite normative debates emphasizing the vulnerability of sellers in contested markets, participants frequently viewed sellers as the beneficiaries, though less strongly than in non‑contested exchanges. These findings have implications for the institutional analysis of contested commodity markets. Because the perceived legitimacy of market institutions partly depends on public beliefs, our results help illuminate the moral and policy disputes that shape debates over commodification.