Feedback and dynamics in public good experiments (original) (raw)
Related papers
Ignorance is not Always Bliss: Feedback and Dynamics in Public Good Experiments
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
In this paper we study the effects of providing additional feedback about individual contributions and earnings on the dynamics of contributions in a repeated public good game. We include treatments where subjects can freely choose whether to obtain additional information about individual contributions or individual earnings. We find that, in the aggregate, contributions decline less fast when additional information about contributions and earnings is provided on top of aggregate information. We also find that there exist substantial but intuitively appealing differences in the way individuals react to feedback. Particularly, individuals with a high propensity to contribute tend to imitate the highest contributor more often and are more inclined to obtain feedback about individual contributions than about individual earnings than individuals with a lower propensity to contribute.
Journal of Economic Psychology, 2009
In the recent literature, several hypotheses have been put forward in order to explain the decline of contributions in repeated public good games. We present results of an experiment which allows to evaluate these hypotheses. The main characteristics of our experimental design are a variation of information feedback and an elicitation of individual beliefs about others' contributions. Altogether, our data support the hypothesis of conditional cooperation with a selfish bias.
Endowment Effects and Contribution Strategies in Public Good Experiments
2017
Abstract: We investigate behavior in a laboratory public good experiment with unique endowment schemes that allow a wider range of contribution strategies than in standard voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM) experiments. A baseline treatment follows a standard VCM design (subjects receive 10 tokens in each of 10 rounds that may be allocated between a private account and a group account). In a new carry-over treatment, any tokens not allocated to the group account in the current period are made available for contributions in future periods. Under full endowment, subjects receive 100 tokens in round one (rather than 10 tokens per round for each of 10 rounds). In the pledge treatment, subjects’ allocation decisions for an initial endowment of 100 tokens may be changed in any round and are binding only for the final round. We find that the size of the effective endowment and whether contributions are binding significantly impact subject decision making. Deviations from the free ridin...
Stimulating Contributions to Public Goods through Information Feedback: Some Experimental Results
PloS one, 2016
In traditional public good experiments participants receive an endowment from the experimenter that can be invested in a public good or kept in a private account. In this paper we present an experimental environment where participants can invest time during five days to contribute to a public good. Participants can make contributions to a linear public good by logging into a web application and performing virtual actions. We compared four treatments, with different group sizes and information of (relative) performance of other groups. We find that information feedback about performance of other groups has a small positive effect if we control for various attributes of the groups. Moreover, we find a significant effect of the contributions of others in the group in the previous day on the number of points earned in the current day. Our results confirm that people participate more when participants in their group participate more, and are influenced by information about the relative p...
Endogenous Shifts Over Time in Patterns of Contributions in Public Good Games
2000
This paper studies endogenous preference change over time in a public good environment as an explanation of cooperative behavior. We investigate experimentally the role of (i) uncertainty and (ii) in- centives for members of group size four. We compare the result to the benchmark with no uncertainty and no incentives. Our results show that (a) uncertainty in private account increases
The Dynamics of Individual Preferences in Repeated Public Good Experiments
2012
We investigate the stability of individual behavior in a repeated public good experiment over time by reinviting subjects back to the lab up to four times in one week intervals. We exclude effects due to learning about others' behavior and reputation building by employing a non-learning and non-reputation environment: subjects are neither told nor paid their earnings until the very
Communication and punishment in voluntary contribution experiments
We consider a voluntary contributions game, in which players may punish others after contributions are made and observed. The productivity of contributions, as captured in the marginal-per-capita return, differs among individuals, so that there are two types: high and low productivity. Every two or eight periods, depending on the treatment, individuals vote on a punishment regime, in which certain individuals are permitted, but not required, to have punishment directed toward them. The punishment system can condition on type and contribution history. The results indicate that the most effective regime, in terms of contributions and earnings, is one that allows punishment of low contributors only, regardless of productivity. Nevertheless, only a minority of sessions converge to this system, indicating a tendency for the voting process to lead to suboptimal institutional choice.
How the incentive to contribute affects contributions in the one-shot public goods game
Scientific Reports, 2020
Enmeshed in various social structures, humans must often weigh their own interest against the interest of others—including the common interest of groups they belong to. The Public Goods Game (PGG), which succinctly pits individual interest against group interest, has been a staple of research into how people make such decisions. It has been studied in many variations, in the laboratory and (increasingly) online. One of the defining parameters of the PGG is the marginal per capita return of the group project (MPCR), which determines the incentive for contributing to the group project relative to the incentive of keeping points in the personal account. The effect of MPCR on contributions has been investigated before, but its effects have never been characterised with high resolution. Here, we present a systematic and high-resolution investigation of the effect of MPCR in groups of three. We do this in a large-scale online decision making experiment recruiting participants from Amazon ...