Identification of individuals and groups in a public goods experiment

Sven Christens (), Astrid Dannenberg and Florian Sachs ()
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Sven Christens: University of Kassel
Florian Sachs: University of Magdeburg

MAGKS Papers on Economics from Philipps-Universität Marburg, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics, Department of Economics (Volkswirtschaftliche Abteilung)

Abstract: Revealing the identities of contributors has been shown to increase cooperation in public goods games. In this paper we experimentally investigate whether this finding holds true when decisions are made by groups rather than individuals. We distinguish between groups in which members can discuss face-to-face to reach a decision and groups in which members communicate via computer chat. The results confirm the positive effect of identification on cooperation among individuals. For groups, however, we only find a small and temporary effect of identification, irrespective of the type of communication. The reason for this is that the sensitivity to others’ opinions plays an important role for individual decisions but not for group decisions.

Keywords: Climate change; public goods experiment; cooperation; group decisions; face-to-face communication; computer chat communication; identification; shame (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 C92 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36 pages
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mar:magkse:201755

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