Multilevel Public Goods Game: an Online Experiment

Marco Catola, Simone D'Alessandro (simone.dalessandro@unipi.it), Pietro Guarnieri and Veronica Pizziol

Discussion Papers from Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy

Abstract: In the multilevel public goods games, subjects face a trade-off between contributing to the provision of a local good or a global good benefiting the whole society. Institutions may attempt to counteract ingroup favouritism by increasing the efficiency of the global public good. In an online experiment, we systematically address all the conflicting results concerning efficiency obtained in the literature. By gradually increasing the relative return of the global good, we find evidence of i. a levelling up in the contribution to the global good, ii. a substitution at the expenses of the local good, and iii. no evidence of an increase in the total contribution to the two groups (i.e. marginal crowding in). We also provide a measure of an intrinsic preference for the local group revealing in-group favouritism and a novel measure of an intrinsic preference for the global good revealing a motivation to contribute to the society independently of efficiency reasons.

Keywords: Multilevel public good game; online experiment; efficiency; social dilemma (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D71 H4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
Note: ISSN 2039-1854
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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