Incentivizing cooperation against a norm of defection: Experimental Evidence from Egypt

Mazen Hassan, Engi Amin, Sarah Mansour and Stefan Voigt

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2023, vol. 107, issue C

Abstract: Voluntary cooperation contributes significantly to development and prosperity. Settings where the social norm is free-riding, however, offer a particular challenge for public goods contribution. In this paper we ask two questions: how could high contributors to public goods in such contexts be encouraged to sustain their contributions against a defecting crowd? Second, how can low contributors – who are abundant in such milieus – be lured to increase their contributions without expensive institutional interventions or major structural transformations? To answer these questions, we conducted three public good experiments with 456 subjects in Egypt. In the first experiment, we find that priming high cooperators with a message that makes them take pride in being among the minority of cooperators increases contributions, albeit with a lag. In the second and third experiments, we test how far three possible appeal messages – emphasizing religious, patriotic, or social harm– could drive low cooperators to increase their contributions. We show that using such messages does increase contributions significantly.

Keywords: Cooperation; public goods game; pride; appeals; Egypt (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D02 D91 O17 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804323001477
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:soceco:v:107:y:2023:i:c:s2214804323001477

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2023.102121

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().