Isolating and identifying motivations: A voluntary contribution mechanism experiment with interior Nash equilibria

Takehisa Kumakawa (), Tatsuyoshi Saijo () and Takehiko Yamato
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Takehisa Kumakawa: Osaka University
Takehiko Yamato: Tokyo Institute of Technology

No SDES-2015-16, Working Papers from Kochi University of Technology, School of Economics and Management

Abstract: What motivates subjects in their decision making is a lingering issue in public goods experiments. Using a nonlinear payoff function and a two-subject model, we create a one-toone correspondence between contributions and motivations, enabling us to isolate and identify the following three possible motivations: Nash, cooperative, and altruistic motivations. The experimental results show that Nash- motivated behavior accounts for more than 70% of all decisions. Some subjects reveal a cooperative motivation when they know the other subject's payoff information. Altruistic motivation is found to be rare throughout the experiment.

Keywords: Motivation; Nash; Cooperation; Altruism; Voluntary contribution mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2015-03, Revised 2015-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
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Published in SDE Series, March 2015, pages 1-30

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http://www.souken.kochi-tech.ac.jp/seido/wp/SDES-2015-16.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kch:wpaper:sdes-2015-16

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