Public Goods Games and Psychological Utility: Theory and Evidence

Sanjit Dhami, Mengxing Wei and Ali al-Nowaihi

No 7014, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We consider a theoretical model of a public goods game that incorporates reciprocity, guilt-aversion/surprise-seeking, and the attribution of intentions behind these emotions. In order to test our predictions, we implement the ‘induced beliefs method’ and a within-subjects design, using the strategy method. We find that all our psychological variables contribute towards the explanation of contributions. Guilt-aversion is pervasive at the individual-level and the aggregate-level and it is relatively more important than surprise-seeking. Our between-subjects analysis confirms the results of the within-subjects design.

Keywords: public goods games; psychological game theory; reciprocity; surprise-seeking; guilt-aversion; attribution of intentions; induced beliefs method; within and between subjects designs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D03 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-hpe and nep-upt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp7014.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public goods games and psychological utility: Theory and evidence (2019)
Working Paper: Public goods games and psychological utility: Theory and evidence (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7014

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().