Public Goods and the Causal Effect of Expected Cooperation in Representative Samples
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2015-07-03
Author(s)
Abstract
When do societies succeed or fail to provide public goods? Previous research emphasizes that cooperation in public goods games correlates with expectations about cooperation by others among students and other selected demographic subgroups. So far, however, we lack knowledge about whether this reciprocity effect is causal and a general feature of populations. We fielded large-scale representative surveys (N=8,500) in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States that included a public goods game in combination with a novel randomized experiment and a survey instrument eliciting individual's conditional contribution schedules. We find that higher expected cooperation by others causes a significant increase in individual contributions. We also find that positive reciprocity is much more widespread among richer, younger and more educated respondents. Therefore, socio-demographic characteristics matter for understanding behavior in social dilemmas because of their association with social norms of conditional cooperation.
Language
English
Keywords
public goods
cooperation
reciprocity
social dilemmas
respresentative samples
survey experiments
causal effects
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Event Title
2015 Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreis "Handlungs- und Entscheidungstheorie"
Event Location
Stuttgart
Event Date
03.-04.07.2015
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
245978