Abstract: Based on social comparison theory, the information of referents can be divided into three categories: information of average (IA); information of better paid referent (IB); information of worse paid referent (IW). In this study, three hundred and twenty eight college students participated in the scenario experiment, and a 4×2×2 randomized design was adopted. The results indicated that: (a) the main effect of IA was significant: the perception of distributive justice was lowest when participants were informed that they were paid less than average, and the perception of distributive justice was highest when participants knew that they got more than average; (b) the bandwagon effect was significant in all conditions of IA: when participants got IB, their perception of distributive justice decreased sharply; (c) the strongest snob effect appeared when IA was absent: when participants got IW, their perception of distributive justice increased dramatically. Finally, the theoretical and empirical implications of this study are discussed.

Key words: distributive justice, referent, bandwagon effect, snob effect