Volunteering under population uncertainty

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThere is ample evidence that the number of players can have an important impact on the cooperation and coordination behavior of people facing social dilemmas. With extremely few exceptions, the literature on cooperation assumes common knowledge about who is a player and how many players are involved in a certain situation. In this paper, we argue that this assumption is overly restrictive, and not even very common in realworld cooperation problems. We show theoretically and experimentally that uncertainty about the number of players in a Volunteer's Dilemma increases cooperation compared to a situation with a certain number of players. We identify additional behavioral mechanisms amplifying and impairing the eect.

The volunteer’s dilemma explains the bystander effect

“…I discuss them and argue that they cannot explain the bystander effect found in the experiment, concluding that strategic interaction is the main mechanism that drives the experimental results. Therefore, this paper gives external validity to the models that link the volunteer's dilemma with the bystander effect (e.g., Bergstrom 2012Bergstrom , 2017Bliss and Nalebuff 1984;Diekmann 1985;Guha 2020;Hillenbrand and Winter 2018;Weesie 1993Weesie , 1994. Nevertheless, it calls for caution when applying the volunteer's dilemma to predict the probability that the victim is helped.…”

“…In this case, players' strategic interactions in the volunteer's dilemma-in which players are less likely to volunteer in larger groups-could explain the bystander effect observed in the field-in which bystanders are less likely to help in larger groups. While the strategic interactions predicted by the volunteer's dilemma are typically used to describe why people in larger groups are less likely to provide help (Archetti 2011;Bergstrom 2012Bergstrom , 2017Bliss and Nalebuff 1984;Campos-Mercade 2020;Diekmann 1985Diekmann , 1986Diekmann , 1993Franzen 2013;Fromell et al 2019;Guha 2020;Harrington 2001;Healy and Pate 2018;Hillenbrand and Winter 2018;Hillenbrand et al 2020;Kopányi-Peuker 2019;Tutic 2014;Przepiorka and Diekmann 2018;Weesie 1993Weesie , 1994, the connection between the volunteer's dilemma and the bystander effect lacks empirical evidence. 1 In this paper, I test the strategic interactions predicted by the volunteer's dilemma as an explanation for the bystander effect.…”

Motivating Risky Choices Increases Risk Taking

“…To measure risk taking behavior we employed the BRET 10 which is increasingly applied in the experimental literature [11][12][13][14] . In our implementation of the BRET (for which we used a pre-programmed tool for oTree 38 ) subjects had to choose how many boxes to collect from a 10x10-grid containing 100 boxes.…”

“…Such method has never been applied to study this issue. We run an online experiment where we ask participants to make a simple decision involving risk: the "Bomb Risk Elicitation Task" (BRET) 10 , which has been recently used in a number of studies to measure risk taking behavior [11][12][13][14] . We attempt to manipulate the extent of reflection by means of a motivation treatment: participants are required to motivate their choice with a written text before any decision is actually made.…”

Cooperação e aversão à iniquidade: discussões teóricas e dados experimentais

“…Muitos autores também utilizam o termo cooperação referindo-se à dilemas sociais (Parks et al, 2017), e/ou Jogos 6 , como por exemplo, o jogo do dilema do prisioneiro (Nakashima et al, 2017) A Tabela 3 mostra que há consistentemente condições antecedentes manipuladas nos estudos analisados: possibilidade de conversar antes e durante o experimento (Yip et al, 2018); informações sobre pertencer ou não a um grupo (Engelmann et al, 2018), ou seja, ser designado a um grupo específico antes de iniciar o experimento (Jordan et al, 2014) ou saber qual a nacionalidade do outro participante ; informações sobre as regras do jogo/tarefa (Parks et al, 2017); informações sobre qual será a escolha de outras pessoas (Gallo et al, 2015); perguntas sobre características pessoais do próprio participante antes de iniciar o jogo (Baader et al, 2017); informação sobre a possibilidade do comportamento ser punido no futuro ou não (Grieco et al, 2017) e presença de observadores . 2017Parks et al 2017) Kamei (2017Romano & Balliet 2017 Uma mesma categoria nessa tabela pode indicar diferentes manipulações, como, por exemplo, a categoria informações sobre o jogo/tarefa, que engloba manipulações que informaram aos participantes sobre a matriz de consequências (Hillenbrand et al, 2018), ou se o parceiro de jogo era computador ou outra pessoa (Cox et al, 2017), ou sobre a quantidade de tentativas do jogo (Krockow et al, 2018) Esse dado sugere que a maioria dos estudos que fazem parte dessa análise tiveram uma preocupação em estudar a cooperação utilizando uma noção de cooperar que tem sua origem no contexto da discussão sobre a evolução da cooperação (Hamilton, 1964). Cooperação nesse contexto usualmente é entendida como um comportamento que envolve custos para quem executa a ação e beneficia para um outro (Nowak, 2006).…”