Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons: A replication and an extension to income inequality

Michalis Drouvelis and Zeyu Qiu

Economic Inquiry, 2026, vol. 64, issue 1, 120-130

Abstract: Social cooperation often requires individuals to exhibit restraint for the greater good, incurring costs for maintaining public goods or establishing them through generosity. Will cooperative behaviors differ between maintenance and provision dilemmas? We replicate findings showing that low cooperation is more likely in maintenance than provision scenarios among a non‐student sample with reciprocity being the main reason behind cooperative differences. A separate experiment reports similar effects in the case of income inequality, also suggesting dilemma‐specific reciprocity is vital in averting the 'tragedy of the commons'. Our findings reinforce and broaden previous conclusions in the literature.

Date: 2026
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13297

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:bla:ecinqu:v:64:y:2026:i:1:p:120-130

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://ordering.onl ... s.aspx?ref=1465-7295

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Inquiry is currently edited by Tim Salmon

More articles in Economic Inquiry from Western Economic Association International Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().