The Role of Choice in Social Dilemma Experiments

Frank P. Maier-Rigaud () and Jose Apesteguia ()

Bonn Econ Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Germany

Abstract: On the basis of problems related to asymmetric information, self-governance has been proposed and often empirically found to be superior to the external imposition of rules in social dilemma situations. The present paper suggests and experimentally analyses a different line of argument, namely to what extent behavioral aspects can explain these findings. We study this hypothesis using the simplest, most general dilemma form: the prisoner's dilemma (PD). We compare behavior when players are given the possibility of choosing between two different representations of the same PD, to behavior when players are externally assigned to play a specific game. We find that cooperation rates are significantly higher in the games that were chosen.

Keywords: Freedom of Choice; Self-governance; Social Dilemmas; Framing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 C90 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac
Date: 2003-10
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://web.bgse.uni-bonn.de/pub/RePEc/bon/bonedp/bgse22_2003.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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bon:bonedp:bgse22_2003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Bonn Econ Discussion Papers from University of Bonn, Germany
Address: Bonn Graduate School of Economics, University of Bonn, Adenauerallee 24 - 26, 53113 Bonn, Germany
Series data maintained by Daniel Park ().