The Source and Significance of Confusion in Public Goods Experiments

2010 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J Ferraro ◽  
Christian A Vossler
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Institutional Design ◽  
Game Form ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Goods Experiments ◽  
Experimental Parameters ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Other Regarding Preferences ◽  
Design Experiments

Abstract Economists use public goods experiments to develop and test theories of individual preferences and institutional design. Previous work demonstrates many participants in public goods experiments contribute to the public good out of confusion. We design experiments to provide insights on the consequences and causes of confusion. We establish that confusion amounts to more than statistical noise and does not dissipate with repetition (i.e. learning). Confused subjects use experimental parameters and the behavior of other players as cues, which confounds treatment effects and traditional strategies to identify other-regarding preferences through exogenous parameter changes and the modeling of reactions to other subjects’ decisions. We argue that confusion stems from an inaccurate understanding of game incentives (“failure of game form recognition”), which is a consequence of the framing and inadequate payoff information in standard instructions. Modified instructions can substantially reduce confusion, and, in turn, change the distribution of contributions to the public good.

Going Far by Going Together: James M. Buchanan’s Economics of Shared Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Art Carden ◽  
Gregory W. Caskey ◽  
Zachary B. Kessler
Keyword(s):  
Business Ethics ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Public Capital ◽  
The Public ◽  
Economic Progress ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Ethical Communication ◽  
Other Regarding Preferences

We explore themes in Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan’s work and apply his Ethics and Economic Progress to problems facing individuals and firms. We focus on Buchanan’s analysis of the individual work ethic, his exhortations to “pay the preacher” of the “institutions of moral-ethical communication,” and his notion of law as “public capital.” We highlight several ways people with other-regarding preferences can contribute to social flourishing and some of the ways those who have “affected to trade for the public good” might want to redirect their efforts. We show how Buchanan’s work has considerable implications for business ethics. Just as his economic analysis of politics changed how we understand government, we think his economic analysis of ethics can (and should) change how we understand business.

scholarly journals Shame and honour drive cooperation

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 899-901 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Jacquet ◽  
Christoph Hauert ◽  
Arne Traulsen ◽  
Manfred Milinski
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
The Public ◽  
Common Resources ◽  
Public Goods Experiments ◽  
The Commons

Can the threat of being shamed or the prospect of being honoured lead to greater cooperation? We test this hypothesis with anonymous six-player public goods experiments, an experimental paradigm used to investigate problems related to overusing common resources. We instructed the players that the two individuals who were least generous after 10 rounds would be exposed to the group. As the natural antithesis, we also test the effects of honour by revealing the identities of the two players who were most generous. The non-monetary, reputational effects induced by shame and honour each led to approximately 50 per cent higher donations to the public good when compared with the control, demonstrating that both shame and honour can drive cooperation and can help alleviate the tragedy of the commons.

scholarly journals Walk the Talk? The Effect of Voting and Excludability in Public Goods Experiments

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 ◽  
pp. 1-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans J. Czap ◽  
Natalia V. Czap ◽  
Esmail Bonakdarian
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Public Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Projects ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Other Regarding

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of voting and excludability on individual contributions to group projects. We conducted two experiments on excludable and nonexcludable public goods, which provided several important results. First, contrary to our expectations, subjects are generally contributing more to the non-excludable compared to the excludable public good. Second, participating in a vote to choose a public project per se makes no difference in contributions. However, if the project that the individual voted for also gets selected by the group, they contribute significantly more to that project. Third, empathy and locus of control are important driving forces of participation in common projects. Our results have implications on the procedural design of obtaining funding for public projects. First, the public should get involved and have a say in the determination of which project should be realized. Second, it might well pay off to attempt to develop a consensus among the population and obtain near unanimous votes, because in our experiment, subjects discriminate between the project they voted for and the project chosen by the majority. Third, the policy proposers should stress the other-regarding interest of the public good rather than just pecuniary incentives.

Ethnic trust, minority status, and public goods in post-conflict societies

2021 ◽  
pp. 002234332098421
Author(s):  
Sam Whitt
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Intergroup Contact ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Minority Status ◽  
The Public ◽  
Attitudes And Behaviors ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
History Of

This study considers how ethnic trust and minority status can impact the ability of ethnic groups to pursue cooperative public goods, focusing on groups with a history of conflict and lingering hostility. A public good experiment between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in postwar Kosovo reveals that subjects contribute far more to a mutually beneficial public good when they are part of an experimentally induced coethnic majority. However, when in the minority, subjects not only underinvest, but many actively divest entirely, privatizing the public good. Majority/minority status also has wide-ranging implications for how individuals relate to real-world public goods and the institutions of government that provide them. Compared to majority Albanians, survey data indicate how minority Serbs in Kosovo express greater safety and security concerns, feel more politically, socially, and economically excluded, are more dissatisfied with civil liberties and human rights protections, and are less likely to participate politically or pay taxes to support public goods. Conflict-related victimization and distrust of out-groups are strong predictors of these minority group attitudes and behaviors. This suggests a mechanism for how conflict amplifies out-group distrust, increasing parochial bias in public good commitments, especially among minorities who are wary of exploitation at the hands of an out-group majority. To restore trust, this study finds that institutional trust and intergroup contact are important to bridging ethnic divides that inhibit public good cooperation.

A Case for Private Provision but Collective Ownership of Public Goods

1998 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
William D. Gerdes
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Private Provision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Collective Ownership ◽  
Free Ride ◽  
Voluntary Exchange

One strategy for generating Pareto results in a public good model is to create an environment where traders internalize the public good externality. The model presented here accomplishes this by separating the provision and ownership of public goods. Such goods are privately provided but collectively owned. Under this arrangement, Lindahl prices are generated through the voluntary exchange activities of consumers. Persistent attempts to free ride are not consistent with maximizing behavior which leads to internalization.

BELIEFS ABOUT OTHER-REGARDING PREFERENCES IN A SEQUENTIAL PUBLIC GOODS GAME

2005 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 614-622 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER C. COATS ◽  
WILLIAM S. NEILSON
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Other Regarding ◽  
Other Regarding Preferences

scholarly journals Heterogeneous groups cooperate in public good problems despite normative disagreements about individual contribution levels

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kasper Otten ◽  
Vincent Buskens ◽  
Wojtek Przepiorka ◽  
Naomi Ellemers
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Individual Contribution ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Homogeneous Groups ◽  
The Public ◽  
Heterogeneous Groups ◽  
Good Provision ◽  
Good Individual

Abstract Norms can promote human cooperation to provide public goods. Yet, the potential of norms to promote cooperation may be limited to homogeneous groups in which all members benefit equally from the public good. Individual heterogeneity in the benefits of public good provision is commonly conjectured to bring about normative disagreements that harm cooperation. However, the role of these normative disagreements remains unclear because they are rarely directly measured or manipulated. In a laboratory experiment, we first measure participants’ views on the appropriate way to contribute to a public good with heterogeneous returns. We then use this information to sort people into groups that either agree or disagree on these views, thereby manipulating group-level disagreement on normative views. Participants subsequently make several incentivized contribution decisions in a public goods game with peer punishment. We find that although there are considerable disagreements about individual contribution levels in heterogeneous groups, these disagreements do not impede cooperation. While cooperation is maintained because low contributors are punished, participants do not use punishment to impose their normative views on others. The contribution levels at which groups cooperate strongly relate to the average normative views of these groups.

scholarly journals Eco-evolutionary spatial dynamics of non-linear social dilemmas

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaitanya S. Gokhale ◽  
Hye Jin Park
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Structure ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Spatial Dynamics ◽  
Social Dilemmas ◽  
Evolutionary Games ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Evolutionary Trajectory ◽  
The Public ◽  
Non Linear

AbstractSpatial dynamics can promote the evolution of cooperation. While dispersal processes have been studied in simple evolutionary games, real-world social dilemmas are much more complicated. The public good, in many cases, does not increase linearly as per the investment in it. When the investment is low, for example, every additional unit of the investment may help a lot to increase the public good, but the effect vanishes as the number of investments increase. Such non-linear behaviour is the norm rather than an exception in a variety of social as well as biological systems. We take into account the non-linearity in the payoffs of the public goods game as well as the natural demographic effects of population densities. Population density has also been shown to impact the evolution of co-operation. Coupling these non-linear games and population size effect together with an explicitly defined spatial structure brings us one step closer to the complexity of real eco-evolutionary spatial systems. We show how the non-linearity in payoffs, resulting in synergy or discounting of public goods can alter the effective rate of return on the cooperative investment. Synergy or discounting in public goods accumulation affects the resulting spatial structure, not just quantitatively but in some cases, drastically changing the outcomes. In cases where a linear payoff structure would lead to extinction, synergy can support the coexistence of cooperators and defectors. The combined eco-evolutionary trajectory can thus be qualitatively different in cases on non-linear social dilemmas.

scholarly journals Understanding policing as a mechanism of cheater control in cooperating bacteria

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Wechsler ◽  
Rolf Kümmerli ◽  
Akos Dobay
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Parameter Space ◽  
Environmental Conditions ◽  
Genetic Linkage ◽  
Toxin Production ◽  
Evolutionary Stability ◽  
Conditional Strategy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Resistant Mutants

AbstractPolicing occurs in insect, animal and human societies, where it is used as a conditional strategy to prevent cheating and enforce cooperation. Recently, it has been suggested that policing might even be relevant in enforcing cooperation in much simpler organisms such as bacteria. Here, we used individual-based modelling to develop an evolutionary concept for policing in bacteria, and identify the conditions under which it can be adaptive. We modelled interactions between cooperators, producing a beneficial public good, cheaters exploiting the public good without contributing to it, and public good producing policers that secrete a toxin to selectively target cheaters. We found that toxin-mediated policing is favored when (i) toxins are potent and durable, (ii) cheap to produce, (iii) cell and public good diffusion is intermediate, and (iv) toxins diffuse farther than the public good. Overall, we show that toxin-mediated policing can enforce cooperation, but the parameter space where it is beneficial seems quite narrow. Moreover, we found that policing decays when the genetic linkage between public good and toxin production breaks. This is because policing is itself a public good, offering protection to toxin-resistant mutants that still produce public goods, yet no longer invest in toxins. Our work suggests that very specific environmental conditions are required for genetically fixed policing mechanisms to evolve in bacteria, and offers empirically testable predictions for their evolutionary stability.

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