Framing and Misperception in Public Good Experiments

Abstract

Earlier studies have found that framing has a substantial impact on the degree of cooperation observed in public good experiments. We show that the way the public good game is framed affects misperceptions about the incentives of the game. Moreover, we show that such framing‐induced differences in misperceptions are linked to the framing effect on subjects' cooperation behavior. When we do not control for the different levels of misperceptions between frames, we observe a significant framing effect on subjects' cooperation preferences. However, this framing effect becomes insignificant once we remove subjects who misperceive.

Conditional Cooperation and Framing Effects

“…If anything, in the SEQUENTIAL treatment, there is evidence that the FGF method may be underestimating the extent of free riders. 9 Overall, it appears that the simultaneous presentation of others' choices has a pronounced effect on the distribution of types, while the ascending ordering does not. This is also reflected in the results of linear regressions with individual random effects.…”

“…The existence of the two parts was common knowledge, as was the fact that participants would not be informed about the content of the second part before the first part has been completed, and that feedback about outcomes would be provided only at the end of 2 As the reviewer of this paper points out, the impact of a demand effect can be more severe in the FGF method where previous studies have documented considerable levels of confusion among subjects (e.g., Fosgaard, Hansen, and Wengström, 2017) [9]. 3 Similarly, Wolff (2017) [12] used the FGF method to estimate the fraction of conditional cooperators and determined the "revealed preference" Nash equilibria of the public good game.…”

“…He attributed this primarily to his Australian subject pool, but another explanation is that, in his experiment, conditionality was far less salient than in FGF. In addition, Fosgaard, Hansen, and Wengström (2017) [9] employed the FGF method using a positive-negative frame inspired by Andreoni (1995) [14], and found that this manipulation affects subjects' contribution schedules, although this is partly due to misperception of the incentives of the game. Similarly, Gächter, Kölle, and Quercia (2017) [11] found that framing the public good game as a Maintenance or a Provision problem affects the elicited contribution profiles.…”

Impulse balance and framing effects in threshold public good games

“…What our approach is not able to do is unpick why a warm glow exists (and possibly only exists) in the public good frame. This could partly be due to confusion (Fosgaard et al, ) but that seems unlikely to be the whole story. For instance, our Results – suggest that in the public good frame, subjects are more drawn toward contribution than in the public bad frame.…”

“…A large literature has looked at framing effects in social dilemmas (e.g., Andreoni, ; Cookson, ; Cox, ; Cubitt, Drouvelis, & Gächter, ; Dufwenberg, Gächter, & Hennig‐Schmidt, ; Fosgaard, Hansen, & Wengström, , ; Khadjavi & Lange, ; Park, ; Van Dijk & Wilke, ). For the most part, the literature has focused on linear public good games.…”