What exactly is public in a public good game? A lab-in-the-field experiment

Pietro Battiston, Simona Gamba, Matteo Rizzolli and Valentina Rotondi

No 125, Working Papers from "Carlo F. Dondena" Centre for Research on Social Dynamics (DONDENA), Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi

Abstract: Are public good games really capturing individuals' willingness to contribute to real-life public goods? To answer this question, we conducted a lab-in-the-field experiment with communities who own collective goods. In our experiment, subjects voluntarily contribute to a common pool, which can either be subdivided in individual vouchers, as in standard public good games, or used to acquire collective goods, as it happens for real-life public goods. We show that participants' contributions are larger when the voucher is paid individually, suggesting that individuals' willingness to contribute to public goods may be overestimated when based on results from laboratory experiments.

Keywords: ublic goods; lab-in-the-field experiment; cooperation; group behavior; community; indivisibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
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