scholarly journals The Effect of Disclosing Identities in a Socially Incentivized Public Good Game

Games ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 32
Author(s):  
Britta Butz ◽  
Christine Harbring
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
Previous Evidence ◽  
Charitable Donations ◽  
The Public ◽  
Identity Disclosure ◽  
Parametric Statistics ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Non Parametric

We investigate whether revealing the identities in a public good game that includes a donation incentive leads to higher contributions to the public good. Previous evidence suggests that contributions to a public good increase significantly when these take place in public. Also, the amount of money given in charitable donations seems to be sensitive to the revealing of identities. Using a laboratory experiment, we implement a 20% donation share that is dependent on participants’ contributions to a public good. The donation is either costless (because it is financed by the experimenter) or deducted from a team’s contributions. In both settings, we explore whether informing participants that group members’ identities will be disclosed at the end of the experiment leads to higher contributions to the public good. Non-parametric statistics indicate that when donations are costly for the participants, the announcement of subsequent identity disclosure results in significantly higher contributions in the second half of the repeated public good game. In contrast, revealing identities in settings with costless donations reduces contributions to the public good significantly. The regression results indicate that conditional cooperators might be one subgroup driving these results.

scholarly journals Social Pressure in Networks Induces Public Good Provision

Games ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 4
Author(s):  
David Jimenez-Gomez
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Dynamic Model ◽  
Network Topology ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Public Good Provision ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
Best Response ◽  
Good Provision

I develop a dynamic model with forward looking agents, and show that social pressure is effective in generating provision in a public good game: after a small group of agents start contributing to the public good, other agents decide to contribute as well due to a fear of being punished, and this generates contagion in the network. In contrast to earlier models in the literature, contagion happens fast, as part of the best response of fully rational individuals. The network topology has implications for whether contagion starts and the extent to which it spreads. I find conditions under which an agent decides to be the first to contribute in order to generate contagion in the network, as well as conditions for contribution due to a self-fulfilling fear of social pressure.

scholarly journals Self-Governance in Generalized Exchange. A Laboratory Experiment on the Structural Embeddedness of Peer Punishment

Games ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Georg Kanitsar
Keyword(s):  
Laboratory Experiment ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Experimental Evidence ◽  
Experimental Results ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Norm Enforcement ◽  
Structural Setting ◽  
Structural Embeddedness ◽  
Generalized Exchange

Peer punishment is widely lauded as a decentralized solution to the problem of social cooperation. However, experimental evidence of its effectiveness primarily stems from public good structures. This paper explores peer punishment in another structural setting: a system of generalized exchange. In a laboratory experiment, a repeated four-player prisoner’s dilemma is arranged either in a public good structure or in a circular network of generalized exchange. The experimental results demonstrate that the merits of peer punishment do not extend to generalized exchange. In the public good, peer punishment was primarily altruistic, was sensitive to costs, and promoted cooperation. In generalized exchange, peer punishment was also altruistic and relatively frequent, but did not increase cooperation. While the dense punishment network underlying the public good facilitates norm enforcement, generalized exchange decreases control over norm violators and reduces the capacity of peer punishment. I conclude that generalized exchange systems require stronger forms of punishment to sustain social cooperation.

scholarly journals The Circulation of Worthless Tokens Aids Cooperation: An Experiment Inspired by the Kula

Games ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Danese ◽  
Luigi Mittone
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Cheap Talk ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
Traditional Societies ◽  
Control Study

Many anthropological records exist of seemingly worthless tokens exchanged in traditional societies. The most famous instances of such tokens are probably the Kula necklaces and armbands first described by B. Malinowski. In our experiment, each participant can send a token to another participant before each round of a repeated public good game. We use as examples of tokens a bracelet built by the participants in the lab, a simple piece of cardboard provided by the experimenter, and an object brought from home by the participants. Notwithstanding the cheap-talk nature of the decision to send the token, both sending and receiving the token are associated with a significant increase in contributions to the public good. Regression analysis shows that contributions to the public good in the treatments featuring a bracelet and a cardboard piece are higher than in a control study. The home object appears not to have been equally useful in increasing contributions.

scholarly journals Provision of noxious facilities using a market-like mechanism: A simple implementation in the lab

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cesar Mantilla ◽  
Federica Alberti
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
Waste Incinerator ◽  
Public Project ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Third ◽  
Noxious Facilities ◽  
Simple Implementation ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Member

We study the provision of a public project that globally behaves as a public good but locally behaves as a private bad. This scenario imposes two problems: (i) finding a compensation that makes the project acceptable for the pre-determined host, and (ii) securing the budget to pay for the project and the required compensation. We use a market-like mechanism with two useful properties for this scenario: players can either contribute or request subsidies to fund the public project, and players have veto power over the desired project quantity. In our game, two players benefit from a waste incinerator facility, whereas the third group member, the host, is harmed if the facility is too large. We analyze the efficiency and the re-distributive potential of this mechanism, with and without communication, among group members. We find that the probability of positive provision did not differ with and without communication. However, average provided quantities with respect to the efficient quantity increased from 54% to 81% with communication. We also find that contributions fell below the Lindahl taxes, allowing the players who benefit from a larger facility to accrue most of the efficiency gains. The latter result is consistent with the infrequent evidence of veto threats as a bargaining strategy.

Do Young People Adapt Their Prosocial Behaviour to That of Their Peers? An Experimental Exploration

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-352
Author(s):  
Mauricio Salgado ◽  
Alejandra Vásquez ◽  
Alejandra Yáñez
Keyword(s):  
High School Students ◽  
Young People ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Field Experiments ◽  
Dictator Game ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Prosocial Behaviour ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
School Students ◽  
The Public

Moral decisions – that is, decisions that consider the consequences for the welfare of others – can be highly inconsistent across contexts. Here, we explore whether the altruism of young people is related to their willingness to cooperate with others, even in groups comprising non-reciprocating peers. Using the distinction between normative and cognitive expectations, we address this topic conducting several lab-in-the-field experiments with high-school students who played the dictator and linear public good games. We found that the altruism of young people in the dictator game and cooperation in the public good game were related, but only in the first rounds of the public good game. This indicates that young people orient their prosocial behaviour based on cognitive expectations, that is, they consider the information they receive regarding the free riding behaviour of peers and adapt their own. Nonetheless, young people who demonstrated high altruism tended to cooperate unconditionally, regardless of whether they belonged to a cooperative or uncooperative group, and despite disappointments. Finally, self-regarding young people were less likely to defect among cooperative peers. Therefore, group characteristics provide the boundary conditions for the consistency of the prosocial behaviour of young people. Some conceptual and policy implications are discussed.

scholarly journals Common Knowledge Promotes Cooperation in the Threshold Public Goods Game by Reducing Uncertainty

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Deutchman ◽  
Dorsa Amir ◽  
Katherine McAuliffe ◽  
Matthew Jordan
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Threshold Public Goods

Recent work suggests that an important cognitive mechanism promoting coordination is common knowledge—a heuristic for representing recursive mental states. Yet, we know little about how common knowledge promotes coordination. We propose that common knowledge increases coordination by reducing uncertainty about others’ cooperative behavior. We examine how common knowledge increases cooperation in the context of a threshold public goods game, a public good game in which a minimum level of contribution—a threshold—is required. Across two preregistered studies (N = 4,111), we explored how varying (1) the information participants had regarding what their group members knew about the threshold and (2) the threshold level affected contributions. We found that participants were more likely to contribute to the public good when there was common knowledge of the threshold than private knowledge. Using structural equation modeling, we found that the predicted number of group members contributing to the public good and certainty about the predicted number of contributors mediated the effect of information condition on contributions. Our results suggest that common knowledge of the threshold increases public good contributions by reducing uncertainty around other people’s cooperative behavior. These findings point to the influential role of common knowledge in helping to solve large-scale cooperation problems.

scholarly journals Cooperation and the common good

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1687) ◽  
pp. 20150086 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rufus A. Johnstone ◽  
António M. M. Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Private Goods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Marginal Costs ◽  
Group Members ◽  
The Common ◽  
Returns On Investment

In this paper, we draw the attention of biologists to a result from the economic literature, which suggests that when individuals are engaged in a communal activity of benefit to all, selection may favour cooperative sharing of resources even among non-relatives. Provided that group members all invest some resources in the public good, they should refrain from conflict over the division of these resources. The reason is that, given diminishing returns on investment in public and private goods, claiming (or ceding) a greater share of total resources only leads to the actor (or its competitors) investing more in the public good, such that the marginal costs and benefits of investment remain in balance. This cancels out any individual benefits of resource competition. We illustrate how this idea may be applied in the context of biparental care, using a sequential game in which parents first compete with one another over resources, and then choose how to allocate the resources they each obtain to care of their joint young (public good) versus their own survival and future reproductive success (private good). We show that when the two parents both invest in care to some extent, they should refrain from any conflict over the division of resources. The same effect can also support asymmetric outcomes in which one parent competes for resources and invests in care, whereas the other does not invest but refrains from competition. The fact that the caring parent gains higher fitness pay-offs at these equilibria suggests that abandoning a partner is not always to the latter's detriment, when the potential for resource competition is taken into account, but may instead be of benefit to the ‘abandoned’ mate.

The Effect of Fiscal Transparency on the Provision of a Public Good: An Experimental Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-323
Author(s):  
Julian Krause
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Experimental Analysis ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Public Good Game ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fiscal Transparency ◽  
City District ◽  
Set Up

This paper presents a model and experimental results of a public good game to explore the effects of fiscal transparency on the provision of a public good. Two types of fiscal transparency are explored. The first is the transparency of the decision-making process and the second is the transparency of government spending. To answer this question a model for the public good “city district quality” with heterogeneous agents is set up and the design and the results of the experiment are presented.

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