Information defaults in repeated public good provision

Jia Liu, Axel Sonntag and Daniel Zizzo

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2022, vol. 197, issue C, 356-369

Abstract: We study an unexplored type of defaults - information defaults - in a repeated public good provision setting. In our treatments, we vary the default of having or not having contribution information as well as whether the information comes with a positive, zero or negative financial incentive. We find that almost all subjects have the information when this is cost-free or financially beneficial, but around a third have the information even when this is costly. Moreover, a default of not having information leads to a slower unraveling of cooperation which is matched by the beliefs about others’ contributions in these treatments. We also find a secondary informational default effect, challenging previous findings on how defaults work: when the default is no information, subjects do not seek information more often, but they tend to believe that more other subjects seek information.

Keywords: Information defaults; Public good; Value of information; Lab experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D83 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Information defaults in repeated public good provision (2020)
Working Paper: Information defaults in repeated public good provision (2019)
Working Paper: Information defaults in repeated public good provision (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:197:y:2022:i:c:p:356-369

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.03.001

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