Selfish-biased conditional cooperation: On the decline of contributions in repeated public goods experiments

Abstract

Abstract:In the recent literature, several hypotheses have been put forward in order to explain the decline of contributions in repeated public good games. We present results of an experiment which allows to evaluate these hypotheses. The main characteristics of our experimental design are a variation of information feedback and an elicitation of individual beliefs about others' contributions. Altogether, our data support the hypothesis of conditional cooperation with a selfish bias.

Voluntary contributions with imperfect information: An experimental study

“…Since beliefs and observed contributions of the partner are highly correlated, saying that contributions are related to beliefs is qualitatively equivalent to asserting that contributions in both treatments hinge on the other's behavior in the previous period. This result is in line with earlier studies (see, e.g., Croson 2000Croson , 2007Gächter and Renner 2006;Neugebauer et al 2008), and provides evidence for conditionally cooperative behavior. The coefficient of Info is negative and significant, i.e.…”

“…Thus, participants in our experiment anchor their beliefs about the other's contributions on what the other did in the previous period. This is consistent with the work of, e.g., Neugebauer et al (2008) who observe expectations to depend significantly on the partners' one-period lagged contributions.…”

Culture and cooperation

“…The explanation of the decline of cooperation is beyond the scope of this paper. We refer the reader to Neugebauer et al (2009) and Fischbacher & Gächter (2010) for analyses of the almost ubiquitous decline of cooperation in finitely repeated public good games. To test whether there are also cultural differences with regard to the extent of the decline of cooperation, we calculated for each independent group a Spearman rank order correlation of group average contribution and period.…”

Recent Advances in Experimental Studies of Social Dilemma Games

“…Fischbacher and Gächter (2010) [33], for example, report that a "self-serving bias" in conditional cooperation, where each agent attempts to contribute slightly less than the group average, leads to the contribution decay. Neugebauer, Perote, Schmidt, and Loos (2009) [34] provide further evidence on self-serving biases. They examine subjects' own contributions and their beliefs about others' contributions when subjects get feedback about others' contributions and when they do not.…”