Voting on contributions to a threshold public goods game: An experimental investigation

Christian Feige, Karl-Martin Ehrhart and Jan Krämer
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Jan Krämer ()

No 60, Working Paper Series in Economics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management

Abstract: We introduce a binding unanimous voting rule to a public goods game with an uncertain threshold for the total group contribution. In a laboratory experiment we find that voting generates significantly higher total contributions than making individual voluntary contributions to the public good. Heterogeneity with regard to marginal costs of contribution makes coordination on the threshold value somewhat more di cult when voting, but apparently facilitates coordination when not voting. Homogeneous non-voting groups instead exhibit a breakdown of contributions commonly observed in linear public goods games, but unusual for a threshold setting. We also notice a preference for payoff symmetry over maximization of expected welfare in heterogeneous voting groups, which to a lesser extent also appears in nonvoting groups. Using a top-down rule, i.e., splitting the voting process into two separate votes on 1) total contribution and 2) individual contributions does not affect these results.

Keywords: public good; threshold uncertainty; experimental economics; unanimous voting; committee; heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D71 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/100667/1/792981782.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:zbw:kitwps:60

DOI: 10.5445/IR/1000042776

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper Series in Economics from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().