A new experimental mechanism to investigate polarized demands for public goods: the effects of censoring

R. Isaac, Douglas A. Norton and Svetlana Pevnitskaya
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Douglas A. Norton: Florida State University

Experimental Economics, 2019, vol. 22, issue 3, No 2, 585-609

Abstract: Abstract Many social dilemmas involve deciding among alternative public goods, and include cases where part of the population may dislike a particular option. In such cases, an agent may want to spend resources to oppose or reduce the provision of the option they don’t like. We propose the generalized voluntary contributions mechanism (GVCM), which allows allocating resources to increase or decrease the level of public good. Our main treatment variables include two versions of the GVCM (uncensored, or censored at positive provision). We study performance of GVCM for various compositions of the polarized preferences. We find that uncensoring the mechanism does not impose net efficiency costs and leads to more diversity in the provision of the public good. The nature of efficiency loss is more complex compared to standard VCM and is not driven by free riding.

Keywords: Public goods; Generalized voluntary contributions mechanism; Experimental economics; Social dilemmas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C91 C92 D70 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-018-9593-0

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