Taste-based, statistical or aversive? Exploring recruitment discrimination in the French employment market
Résumé
Discrimination continues to be an ongoing challenge in the employment market, yet its
underlying causes have not been fully established. Current research often fails to empirically
test the primary theories—taste-based and statistical discrimination—and typically applies
these theories retrospectively to interpret findings. Moreover, aversive discrimination, now
recognized as a significant form of modern-day racism and a key development in recruitment
discrimination, has been insufficiently studied in scholarly research. This gap has led to
widespread academic calls for a more nuanced approach to measuring and understanding
discrimination.
In response, our study introduces a set of hypotheses related to taste-based, statistical, and
aversive discrimination in a field experiment to ascertain the predominant form of unequal
treatment. This research is pioneering in the European context, marking the first empirical field
investigation into aversive discrimination in a real-world employment scenario.
Through correspondence testing, our study evaluates the influence of various contextual factors
on ethnic and disability-related discrimination in the French employment market. We
incorporate four variables—employment market dynamics, job offer characteristics, salary
levels, and the degree of customer and coworker interaction—to distinguish between the
mechanisms driving these three forms of discrimination. To achieve this, 5,440 simulated
resumes were submitted to French companies for 13 different types of occupation, analyzing
employer callback rates for majority and minority group applicants.2
Our findings confirm that discrimination is an ongoing issue within French organizations. We
found partial evidence supporting both taste-based and aversive discrimination, but none related
to statistical discrimination. The data indicates that candidates with disabilities face greater
discrimination in jobs where pay is above market level and in jobs requiring extensive
interaction with coworkers or customers. Applicants of foreign background experience both
taste-based and aversive discrimination. They face increased discrimination in less competitive
job markets, for high-paying positions, and when applications from their group are of
comparable lower quality to those from the majority group.
These results are examined from legal, social, and managerial perspectives, leading to a set of
differentiated recommendations for policy measures and organizational practices.