Social preferences, beliefs, and the dynamics of free riding in public goods experiments

American Economic Review

Volumn 100, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 541-556

  Fischbacher, Urs ^a,b   Gächter, Simon ^c  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KONSTANZ   (Germany)

^b Institute of Economics   (Switzerland)

^c UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77952410111     PISSN: 00028282     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1257/aer.100.1.541     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Ambrus, Attila, and Parag A. Pathak. 2009. "Cooperation over Finite Horizons: A Theory and Experiments." Unpublished.
2. Andreoni, James. 1988. "Why Free Ride? Strategies and Learning in Public Goods Experiments." Journal of Public Economics, 37(3): 291-304.
3. Andreoni, James. 1995. "Cooperation in Public-Goods Experiments: Kindness or Confusion?" American Economic Review, 85(4): 891-904.
4. Andreoni, James A., and John H. Miller. 1993. "Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Experimental Evidence." Economic Journal, 103(418): 570-85.
5. Arellano, Manuel, and Stephen Bond. 1991. "Some Tests of Specification for Panel Data: Monte Carlo Evidence and an Application to Employment Equations." Review of Economic Studies, 58(2): 277-97.
6. Ashley, Richard, Sheryl Ball, and Catherine Eckel. Forthcoming. "Motives for Giving: A Reanalysis of Two Classic Public Goods Experiments." Southern Economic Journal.
7. Bardsley, Nicholas, and Peter G. Moffatt. 2007. "The Experimetrics of Public Goods: Inferring Motivations from Contributions." Theory and Decision, 62(2): 161-93.
8. Bayer, Ralph-C, Elke Renner, and Rupert Sausgruber. 2009. "Confusion and Reinforcement Learning Experimental in the Public Goods Games." University of Nottingham Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics Discussion Paper 2009-18.
9. Botelho, Anabela, Glenn W. Harrison, Lígia M. Costa Pinto, and Elisabet E. Rutström. 2009. "Testing Static Game Theory with Dynamic Experiments: A Case Study of Public Goods." Games and Economic Behavior, 67():253-65.
10. Bracht, Jürgen, Charles Figuieres, and Marisa Ratto. 2008. "Relative Performance of Two Simple Incentive Mechanisms in a Public Goods Experiment." Journal of Public Economics, 92(1-2): 54-90.
11. Brandts, Jordi, and Arthur Schram. 2001. "Cooperation and Noise in Public Goods Experiments: Applying the Contribution Function Approach." Journal of Public Economics, 79(2): 399-427.
12. Brosig, Jeannette, Joachim Weimann, and Axel Ockenfels. 2003. "The Effect of Communication Media on Cooperation." German Economic Review, 4(2): 217-41.
13. Burlando, Roberto, and Francesco Guala. 2005. "Heterogeneous Agents in Public Goods Experiments." Experimental Economics, 8(1): 35-54.
14. Burlando, Roberto, and John D. Hey. 1997. "Do Anglo-Saxons Free-Ride More?" Journal of Public Economics, 64(1): 41-60.
15. Carpenter, Jeffrey P. 2007. "Punishing Free-Riders: How Group Size Affects Mutual Monitoring and the Provision of Public Goods." Games and Economic Behavior, 60(1): 31-51.
16. Cookson, Richard. 2000. "Framing Effects in Public Goods Experiments." Experimental Economics, 3(1): 55-79.
17. Cooper, Russell, Doug DeJong, Robert Forsythe, and Thomas Ross. 1996. "Cooperation without Reputation: Experimental Evidence from Prisoner's Dilemma Games." Games and Economic Behavior, 12(2): 187-218.
18. Croson, Rachel.1996. "Partners and Strangers Revisited." Economics Letters, 53(1): 25-32.
19. Croson, Rachel. 2007. "Theories of Commitment, Altruism and Reciprocity: Evidence from Linear Public Goods Games." Economic Inquiry, 45(2): 199-216.
20. Croson, Rachel, Enrique Fatas, and Tibor Neugebauer. 2005. "Reciprocity, Matching and Conditional Cooperation in Two Public Goods Games." Economics Letters, 87(1): 95-101.
21. Croson, Rachel, and Jen Shang. 2008. "The Impact of Downward Social Information on Contribution Decisions." Experimental Economics, 11(3): 221-33.
22. Duffy, John, and Jack Ochs. 2009. "Cooperative Behavior and the Frequency of Social Interaction." Games and Economic Behavior, 66(2): 785-812.
23. Egas, Martijn, and Riedl, Arno. 2008. "The Economics of Altruistic Punishment and the Maintenance of Cooperation." Proceedings of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences, 275(1637): 871-78.
24. Falkinger, Josef, Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter, and Rudolf Winter-Ebmer. 2000. "A Simple Mechanism for the Effcient Provision of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence." American Economic Review, 90(1): 247-64.
25. Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter. 2000. "Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments." American Economic Review, 90(4): 980-94.
26. Ferraro, Paul J., and Christian A. Vossler. 2005. "The Dynamics of Other-Regarding Behavior and Confusion: What's Really Going on in Voluntary Contributions Mechanism Experiments?" Georgia State University Andrew Young School of Policy Studies Working Paper 2005-001.
27. Fischbacher, Urs. 2007. "Z-Tree: Zurich Toolbox for Ready-Made Economic Experiments." Experimental Economics, 10(2): 171-78.
28. Fischbacher, Urs, and Simon Gächter. 2009. "On the Behavioral Validity of the Strategy Method in Public Goods Experiments." University of Nottingham Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics Discussion Paper 2009-25.
29. Fischbacher, Urs, Simon Gächter, and Ernst Fehr. 2001. "Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment." Economics Letters, 71(3): 397-404.
30. Frey, Bruno S., and Stephan Meier. 2004. "Social Comparisons and Pro-Social Behavior: Testing "Conditional Cooperation" In a Field Experiment." American Economic Review, 94(5): 1717-22.
31. Gächter, Simon. 2007. "Conditional Cooperation: Behavioral Regularities from the Lab and the Field and Their Policy Implications." In Psychology and Economics: A Promising New Cross-Disciplinary Field, ed. Bruno S. Frey and Alois Stutzer, 19-50. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
32. Gächter, Simon, and Ernst Fehr. 1999. "Collective Action as a Social Exchange." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 39(4): 341-69.
33. Gächter, Simon, Elke Renner, and Martin Sefton. 2008. "The Long-Run Benefits of Punishment." Science, 322(5907): 1510.
34. Goeree, Jacob K., Charles A. Holt, and Susan K. Laury. 2002. "Private Costs and Public Benefits: Unraveling the Effects of Altruism and Noisy Behavior." Journal of Public Economics, 83(2): 255-76.
35. Gujarati, Damodar N. 2003. Basic Econometrics, 4th Edition. New York: MacGrawHill.
36. Guttman, Joel M. 1986. "Matching Behavior and Collective Action: Some Experimental Evidence." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 7(2): 171-98.
37. Hardin, Garrett. 1968. "The Tragedy of the Commons." Science, 162(3859): 1243-1148.
38. Herrmann, Benedikt, and Christian Thöni. 2009. "Measuring Conditional Cooperation: A Replication Study in Russia." Experimental Economics, 12(1): 87-92.
39. Herrmann, Benedikt, Christian Thöni, and Simon Gächter. 2008. "Antisocial Punishment across Societies." Science, 319(5868): 1362-67.
40. Houser, Daniel, and Robert Kurzban. 2002. "Revisiting Kindness and Confusion in Public Goods Experiments." American Economic Review, 92(4): 1062-69.
41. Isaac, R. Mark, and James M. Walker. 1988. "Communication and Free-Riding Behavior: The Voluntary Contribution Mechanism." Economic Inquiry, 26(4): 585-608.
42. Isaac, R. Mark, James M. Walker, and Susan H. Thomas. 1984. "Divergent Evidence on Free Riding: An Experimental Examination of Possible Explanations." Public Choice, 43(2): 113-49.
43. Kelley, Harold, and Anthony Stahelski. 1970. "Social Interaction Basis of Cooperators' and Competitors' Beliefs About Others." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16(1): 190-219.
44. Keser, Claudia, and Frans van Winden. 2000. "Conditional Cooperation and Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods." Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 102(1): 23-39.
45. Kocher, Martin G., Todd Cherry, Stephan Kroll, Robert J. Netzer, and Matthias Sutter. 2008. "Conditional Cooperation on Three Continents." Economics Letters, 101(3): 175-78.
46. Kurzban, Robert, and Daniel Houser. 2005. "Experiments Investigating Cooperative Types in Humans: A Complement to Evolutionary Theory and Simulations." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102(5): 1803-07.
47. Laury, Susan K., James M. Walker, and Arlington W. Williams. 1995. "Anonymity and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 27(3): 365-80.
48. Masclet, David, Charles Noussair, Steven Tucker, and Marie- ClaireVilleval. 2003. "Monetary and Nonmonetary Punishment in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism." American Economic Review, 93(1): 366-80.
49. Muller, Laurent, Martin Sefton, Richard Steinberg, and Lise Vesterlund. 2008. "Strategic Behavior and Learning in Repeated Voluntary Contribution Experiments." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 67(3-4): 782-93.
50. Neugebauer, Tibor, Javier Perote, Ulrich Schmidt, and Malte Loos. 2009. "Selfish-Biased Conditional Cooperation: On the Decline of Contributions in Repeated Public Goods Experiments." Journal of Economic Psychology, 30(1): 52-60.
51. Nikiforakis, Nikos, and Hans-Theo Normann. 2008. "A Comparative Statics Analysis of Punishment in Public-Good Experiments." Experimental Economics, 11(4): 358-69.
52. Ockenfels, Axel. 1999. Fairness, Reziprozität und Eigennutz - Ökonomische Theorie und Experimentelle Evidenz. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
53. Ockenfels, Axel, and Joachim Weimann. 1999. "Types and Patterns: An Experimental East-West-German Comparison of Cooperation and Solidarity." Journal of Public Economics, 71(2): 275-87.
54. Olson, Mancur. 1965. The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
55. Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, the Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
56. Ostrom, Elinor, James M. Walker, and Roy Gardner. 1992. "Covenants with and without a Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible." American Political Science Review, 86(2): 404-17.
57. Palfrey, Thomas R., and Jeffrey E. Prisbrey. 1997. "Anomalous Behavior in Public Goods Experiments: How Much and Why?" American Economic Review, 87(5): 829-46.
58. Park, Eun-Soo. 2000. "Warm-Glow Versus Cold-Prickle: A Further Experimental Study of Framing Effects on Free-Riding." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 43(4): 405-21.
59. Samuelson, Paul A. 1954. "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure." The Review of Economics and Statistics, 36(4): 387-89.
60. Sefton, Martin, Robert Shupp, and James M. Walker. 2007. "The Effect of Rewards and Sanctions in Provision of Public Goods." Economic Inquiry, 45(4): 671-90.
61. Selten, Reinhard. 1967. "Die Strategiemethode zur Erforschung des eingeschränkt rationalen Verhaltens im Rahmen eines Oligopolexperimentes. " In Beiträge Zur Experimentellen Wirtschaftsforschung, ed. Heinz Sauermann, 136-68. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
62. Selten, Reinhard, and Rolf Stoecker. 1986. "End Behavior in Sequences of Finite Prisoner's Dilemma Super-games: A Learning-Theory Approach." Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 7(1): 47-70.
63. Sonnemans, Joep, Arthur Schram, and Theo Offerman. 1999. "Strategic Behavior in Public Good Games: When Partners Drift Apart." Economics Letters, 62(1): 35-41.
64. Sugden, Robert. 1984. "Reciprocity: The Supply of Public Goods through Voluntary Contributions." Economic Journal, 94(376): 772-87.
65. Weber, Roberto A. 2003. "'Learning' with No Feedback in a Competitive Guessing Game." Games and Economic Behavior, 44(1): 134-44.
66. Weimann, Joachim. 1994. "Individual Behavior in a Free Riding Experiment." Journal of Public Economics, 54(2): 185-200.