Does heterogeneity spoil the basket? The role of productivity and feedback information on public good provision

Abstract

In a circular neighborhood of eight, each member contributes repeatedly to two asymmetric (i.e. with different freeriding incentives) local public goods, one with the left and one with the right neighbor. All two-person public good games provide only local feedback information and are structurally independent in spite of their overlapping player sets. Here heterogeneity across neighbors is induced by two randomly selected members, named "Bad" Apples, who are either less productive or excluded from periodic information feedback about their payoffs and neighbors' contributions. Although the presence of both "Bad" Apple types leads to the neighborhood, as a whole, evolving less cooperatively, the way in which it spreads is quite different. While less productive "Bad" Apples directly initiate the spoiling of the basket due to their low contributions, "Bad" Apples excluded from periodic information are exploited by their neighbors. Furthermore, we find evidence that "Bad" Apples' positioning affects contributions in the neighborhood.

Eye-Tracking as a Method for Legal Research

“…Not everybody is the same. This also holds true when it comes to the choice of decision mode, and to mental process more broadly (Chan, Mestelman et al 1999, Burlando and Guala 2005, Angelovski, Di Cagno et al 2018). Yet even if potential addressees of regulatory intervention come in cognizable types, often times the regulator must still choose a uniform intervention.…”

Public goods and bads with vulnerable individuals: How information and social nudges change behaviour

“…Mathematically, the higher the MPCR, the greater an individual's incentive to cooperate. However, there is experimental literature that finds no significant change in cooperation (and sometimes a slight reduction in cooperation) due to heterogeneity in MPCRs (Fisher et al, 1995; Fischbacher et al, 2014; de Oliveira et al, 2015; Brick et al, 2016; Angelovski et al, 2018). Our experimental design does not just look at the effects of heterogeneity but also look at the behaviour of individuals whose MPCRs are greater than 1.…”

“…Our paper contributes to the literature on how heterogeneity in returns affects public good contributions by including a unique feature in the experimental design. When individual MPCRs differ within a group where everyone faces a social dilemma, heterogeneity in returns has been shown to decrease public contributions by eroding social cohesion and undermining the willingness of individuals to engage in collective action (Fisher et al, 1995; Fischbacher et al, 2014; de Oliveira et al, 2015; Brick et al, 2016; Angelovski et al, 2018). For example, Fischbacher et al (2014) finds heterogeneity in MPCRs decreases unconditional contributions and individual reactions to heterogeneity differ systematically.…”

Decisions on Extending Group Membership—Evidence from a Public Good Experiment

“…Ultimately, the total individual payoff consists of payoffs from one randomly chosen round out of part I and part II, from the pretest to determine player types, and from the estimations of beliefs. 9 After the experiment, subjects are asked to complete a questionnaire (see Appendix B).…”

“…In economic lab experiments, group members in cooperation settings are frequently assumed to be homogeneous. However, in real firms, group members are often heterogeneous, e.g., with respect to demographic characteristics [1,2], cultural background [3,4], abilities [5,6], or endowment distribution [7][8][9][10]. These characteristics may impact an individual's tendency to cooperate.…”