Voting on Thresholds for Public Goods: Experimental Evidence

Rauchdobler, Julian; Sausgruber, Rupert; Tyran, Jean‐Robert

doi:10.1628/001522110x503370

Cited by 17 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…A common feature in all treatments as compared to Baseline is that participants actively choose one organization over the other. If such a choice induces self-commitment, we should observe an higher level of compliance for the selected organization as compared to the non-selected organization (Rauchdobler, Sausgruber, and Tyran, 2010). Since commitment is stronger when it is made publicly, a corollary of this hypothesis is that commitment should be stronger when the decision is made in group, and even stronger when the group decision happens after the ability to coordinate.…”

Section: Hypothesis 2 (Social Coordination) Thanks To the Opportunity To Coordinate Participants Inmentioning

confidence: 95%

Does voting on tax fund destination imply a direct democracy effect?

Jacquemet

Luchini

Malézieux

2021

International Review of Law and Economics

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Does giving taxpayers a voice over the destination of tax revenues lead to more honest income declarations? Previous experiments have shown that giving participants the opportunity to select the organization that receives their tax funds tends to increase tax compliance. The aim of this paper is to assess whether this increase in compliance is induced by the sole fact of giving subjects a choice -a "direct democracy effect". To that aim, we ask participants to a tax evasion game to choose, in a collective or individual choice setting, between two very similar organizations which provide the same social (ecological) benefits. We elicit compliance for both organizations before the choice is made so as to control for the counter-factual compliance decision. We find that democracy does not increase compliance, and even observe a slight negative effect -in particular for women. Our results confirm the existence of a commitment effect of democracy, leading to favor more the selected organization when it was actively chosen. The commitment effect of democracy is however not enough to overcome the decrease in the level of compliance. Thanks to response times data, we show that prior choice on similar options as compared to a purely random selection weakens the preference for honesty. One important field application of our results is that democracy in tax spending must offer real choices to tax payers to improve compliance.

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Section: Hypothesis 2 (Social Coordination) Thanks To the Opportunity To Coordinate Participants Inmentioning

confidence: 95%

Does voting on tax fund destination imply a direct democracy effect?

Jacquemet

Luchini

Malézieux

2021

International Review of Law and Economics

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“…We give a brief overview of the relevant researches as follows. The existence of a threshold in TPGG is positive, in general, for cooperation given that free-riding is no longer the dominant strategy due to the existence of multiple equilibria and the amount of cooperation is aected by the level of the threshold [32][33][34][35]. Uncertainty about the threshold level of contributions needed for successful action is one factor that potentially aects individuals' decisions to participate in a collective action [36][37][38].…”

Section: Contentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolution of global contribution in multi-level threshold public goods games with insurance compensation

Tang

2018

J. Stat. Mech.

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Abstract. Understanding voluntary contribution in threshold public goods games has important practical implications. To improve contributions and provision frequency, free-rider problem and assurance problem should be solved. Insurance could play a significant, but largely unrecognized, role in facilitating a contribution to provision of public goods through providing insurance compensation against the losses. In this paper, we study how insurance compensation mechanism aects individuals' decision-making under risk environments. We propose a multi-level threshold public goods game model where two kinds of public goods games (local and global) are considered. Particularly, the global public goods game involves a threshold, which is related to the safety of all the players. We theoretically probe the evolution of contributions of dierent levels and free-riders, and focus on the influence of the insurance on the global contribution. We explore, in both the cases, the scenarios that only global contributors could buy insurance and all the players could. It is found that with greater insurance compensation, especially under high collective risks, players are more likely to contribute globally when PAPER: Interdisciplinary statistical mechanics

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“…Rondeau and List (2008) found higher contributions for higher threshold levels in a fundraising field experiment, but the increase in contributions was insignificant. Rauchdobler, Sausgruber, and Tyran (2009) showed that imposing thresholds in public good games could also result in lower contribution rates.…”

Section: Preferences In Public Good Provision Under Conditions Of Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Cash Transfers Crowd Out Community Investment in Public Goods? Lessons from a Field Experiment on Health Education

Hoop¹,

Kempen²,

Fort

2011

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

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This article discusses voluntary contributions to health education in Peru, using a new experimental setup to identify voluntary contributions to local public goods. The experiment enables individuals to contribute to a health education meeting facilitated by an NGO, which they know will only be organized if the cumulative investment level exceeds a certain threshold value. In contrast to expectations of aid distributors, individuals contributed a substantial amount of money, despite the supposed long-term nature of the benefits. The result suggests that donor paternalism, undermining the agency of beneficiaries to exercise control over funds, is not always necessary to guarantee investment in local public goods. We explore multiple interpretations, suggesting that “unaccounted for” short-term benefits from participation as well as liquidity and paternalistic altruism add to explaining the relatively high investment. More in general, the article shows the potential for using experimental research methods in the area of nonprofit management.

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Voting on Thresholds for Public Goods: Experimental Evidence

Cited by 17 publications

References 52 publications

Does voting on tax fund destination imply a direct democracy effect?

Does voting on tax fund destination imply a direct democracy effect?

Evolution of global contribution in multi-level threshold public goods games with insurance compensation

Do Cash Transfers Crowd Out Community Investment in Public Goods? Lessons from a Field Experiment on Health Education

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