Group cooperation of village officials in Chinese rural resettlement: A lab in the field

Abstract

We examine decisions made by village officials in a public goods game and their impact on villagers' attitudes toward a resettlement project in seven rural villages in China. The data comes from two sources: (i) a laboratory experiment with village officials, and (ii) a survey of villagers. Villages whose officials exhibited more cooperative behavior in the laboratory reported higher support levels from the villagers. We find that teams with higher average contribution levels in the PGG game relayed the resettlement news to their villagers earlier than other teams and also possess greater altruistic preferences.