‘Expressive’ obligations in public good games: Crowding-in and crowding-out effects

Michele Bernasconi (), Luca Corazzini and Anna Marenzi

Research in Economics, 2013, vol. 67, issue 1, 13-24

Abstract: We study individual contributions in a repeated linear public good experiment in which, in each period, subjects are required to contribute a minimum amount and face a certain probability of being audited. Audited subjects who contribute less than the required amount are convicted to pay the difference between the obligation and the voluntary contribution. We investigate the ‘expressive’ force of the obligations. While at early stages subjects contribute the minimum level, with repetition contributions decline below the required amount. We observe that expressive obligations exert a rather robust crowding-out effect on voluntary contributions as compared to a linear public good game. Crowding-out is stronger when payments collected through the auditing procedure are distributed to subjects rather than when they are a deadweight loss.

Keywords: ‘Expressive’ obligations; Motivation crowding theory; Social dilemmas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944312000439
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:reecon:v:67:y:2013:i:1:p:13-24

DOI: 10.1016/j.rie.2012.09.004

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Economics is currently edited by Federico Etro

More articles in Research in Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().