Organizing Groups for Collective Action

Abstract

How can the beneficiaries of collective action be persuaded to contribute the resources (time, energy, money) necessary for the effort to succeed? Rational and selfish players will recognize they can free ride on the successful contributions of others. If the effort is not successful, they will lose a contribution—and be “suckered.” Other than relying on altruism, organizers of the group effort can modify incentives so that players are more prepared to contribute. Laboratory experiments offer one way of assessing the effectiveness of various such modifications; we conducted such tests to see how well contributing is promoted by (1) assuring contributors that they will not lose if the group effort fails (a “money-back guarantee”) and (2) enforcing contributions if it succeeds (“fair share”). We expect the latter to be more successful because it is “stable,” unlike the former, whose success can be undermined by expectations of that success. Three experimental replications demonstrate that the money-back guarantee is no more successful than a standard dilemma, but fair-share requirements increase contributing significantly over that base. Analysis of subjects' expectations about others' behavior offers some support to the hypothesized process undermining the money-back guarantee, but motivational factors must also be taken into account for a full explanation.

The problem of maintaining compliance within stable coalitions: experimental evidence

“…We demonstrate that both factors contributed to the poor showing of stable coalitions with memberfinanced enforcement. Like other authors (Van de Kragt et al 1983;Dawes et al 1986;Suleimen and Rapoport 1992;Rapoport and Suleimen 1993;Cadsby and Maynes 1999) we find that increasing the participation threshold lowered the average provision of a public good because coalitions formed less frequently. Moreover, even though we structured the compliance incentives so that each member of a coalition had the financial motivation to comply, a significant number did not.…”

“…Thus, we can explain the poor performance of the costly enforcement treatment by examining the relative importance of these effects. Kragt et al 1983;Dawes et al 1986;Isaac et al 1989;Rapoport and Eshed-Levy 1989;Erev and Rapoport 1990;Suleimen and Rapoport 1992;Rapoport and Suleimen 1993;Mysker et al 1996;Marks and Croson 1998;Marks and Croson 1999). A handful of other studies have found results that do not fall into the 50 -70% participation range, including Cadsby and Maynes (1999) who found that the public good is provided in only 26% of pooled trials and Bagnoli and Mckee (1991) who found that the public good was provided in 83% of all trials.…”

“…The analysis of stable coalitions is important in many contexts, including the formation of cartels (D'Aspremont et al 1983;Diamantoudi 2005), voluntary environmental agreements (Carraro and Siniscalco 1993;Barrett 1994;Kolstad 2007;Dawson and Segerson 2008), the provision of threshold public goods (Van de Kragt 1983;Dawes et al 1986;Marks and Croson 1998) and industry mergers (Vasconcelos 2006). Although many definitions of coalitional stability exist, the concept initially proposed by D' Aspremont et al (1983) is frequently adopted.…”

Collective action and the evolution of social norms

“…The dominant strategy is a zero contribution no matter what others do. An oft-replicated finding, however, is that the willingness of subjects to contribute to the provision of a public good is strongly correlated with their expectations of the behavior of others (Dawes, McTavish, and Shaklee, 1977;Dawes, Orbell, and van de Kragt, 1986;Orbell and Dawes, 1991;Brandts andSchram, 1995: Croson, 1998). In a provision point experiment, for example, all those who contributed sufficient funds to produce the benefit predicted that sufficient funds would be provided by others to make their own contribution superfluous (Messick, 1999).…”

The microfoundations of macroeconomics: an evolutionary perspective

“…Behavioural research using game theoretic models show that co-operative behaviour is the outcome when realistic options are allowed such as continuous communication among players and retaliation toward free riders. As summarised by Gintis (2000) games such as The Ultimatum Game (Güth et al 1982), The Public Goods Game (Isaac et al 1994), and the Public Goods Game with Retaliation (Dawes et al 1986) consistently show that co-operative, group-beneficial behaviour is pervasive in human groups. Boyd and Richerson (1992) argue persuasively that when retaliation (punishment for anti-social behaviour) is allowed almost any conceivable behaviour may evolve in large groups.…”