New Categories of Conditional Contribution Strategies in the Public Goods Game

Klaudia Schäffer, Adrienn Král and Ádám Kun ()
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Klaudia Schäffer: Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös University, H1117 Budapest, Hungary
Adrienn Král: Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös University, H1117 Budapest, Hungary
Ádám Kun: Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös University, H1117 Budapest, Hungary

Games, 2025, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: Human cooperation is ubiquitous and instinctive. We are among the most cooperative species on Earth. Still, research mostly focuses on why we cooperate, instead of understanding why some of us do not do so. The public goods game can be used to map human cooperation as well as to study free riding. We acquired data through an online, unincentivized questionnaire which prompted respondents to choose how much of an initial endowment to contribute to a common pool. The respondents contributed, on average, 54% of their initial endowment to the common pool. The usual categorization scheme of the elicited conditional contribution pattern discerns unconditional free riders who do not contribute irrespective of the contributions of others and calls everyone a conditional cooperator who correlates their contribution with that of the others. However, someone consistently offering less than the others should not be called a cooperator. Consequently, based on the conditional contribution patterns among our respondents, we suggest a recategorization of contribution patterns into the following categories: unconditional cooperator (1.5%), unconditional free rider (10.6%), perfect conditional cooperator (42.6%), hump-shaped contributor (0.7%), V-shaped contributor (0.4%), conditional cooperator (16.6%), conditional free rider (13.6%), conditional contributor (6.4%), negative conditional contributor (0%), and others (7.6%). We only call someone a cooperator if the respondent at least matches others’ contribution, and call everyone consistently offering less a free rider. Furthermore, we found no difference between the contributions of women and men. No correlation of contribution with age, educational attainment, and size of the residential settlement was found. Students’ contributions were not different from non-students’ contributions. We found a significant correlation of the contribution to the common pool with hypercompetitive orientation (negative correlation) and the self-assessed willingness to take risks in general (positive correlation).

Keywords: public goods game; public goods; prisoner’s dilemma; tragedy of the commons; strategy method; cooperation; conditional cooperation; free rider; voluntary contribution mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C C7 C70 C71 C72 C73 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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