From the lab to the field: An experimental investigation of the provision of a club good

Mohamed Ali Bchir

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2014, vol. 51, issue C, 57-67

Abstract: Club goods are an important category of collective goods. However, unlike public goods, very few experiments address the issue of the provision of club goods, and no studies have specifically explored a field case. In this experiment, a membership fee is introduced to improve the successful provision of a threshold collective good. The experiment began in the laboratory with students, and moved progressively through controlled stages to the field with farmers belonging to an association managing an irrigation system. In the laboratory, the experiment reveals that the club good setting significantly increases the successful provision rate of the threshold collective good, and is significantly robust in the intercultural comparison. However, in the field, the club good setting fails to significantly improve the provision of the collective good. The cooperative behavior of farmers explains this difference. In contrast to students, farmers have a high level of cooperation that is sustained over a long period of time.

Keywords: Public goods; Club goods; Step-level goods; Provision; Farmers; Irrigation system; Field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 H41 O13 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221480431400041X
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:51:y:2014:i:c:p:57-67

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2014.03.004

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 ().