Enhancing voluntary contributions in a public goods economy via a minimum individual contribution level

Michela Chessa () and Patrick Loiseau ()
Additional contact information
Michela Chessa: Université Côte d’Azur
Patrick Loiseau: Inria, FairPlay Team

Public Choice, 2024, vol. 201, issue 1, No 12, 237-261

Abstract: Abstract We propose and theoretically analyze a measure to encourage greater voluntary contributions to public goods. Our measure is a simple intervention that restricts individuals’ strategy sets by imposing a minimum individual contribution level while still allowing for full free riding for those who do not want to contribute. We show that for a well-chosen value of the minimum individual contribution level, this measure does not incentivize any additional free riding while strictly increasing the total contributions relative to the situation without the minimum contribution level. Our measure is appealing because it is nonintrusive and in line with the principle of “freedom of choice.” It is easily implementable for many different public goods settings where more intrusive measures are less accepted. This approach has been implemented in practice in some applications, such as charities.

Keywords: Public goods; Voluntary contribution; Potential maximizer Nash equilibria; Minimum contribution level (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-024-01165-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:kap:pubcho:v:201:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s11127-024-01165-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-024-01165-1

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().