The effect of subgroup homogeneity of efficacy on contribution in public good dilemmas

Paton Pak Chun Yam, Gary Ting Tat Ng, Wing Tung Au, Lin Tao, Su Lu, Hildie Leung and Jane M Y Fung

PLOS ONE, 2018, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: This paper examines how to maximize contribution in public good dilemmas by arranging people into homogeneous or heterogeneous subgroups. Past studies on the effect of homogeneity of efficacy have exclusively manipulated group composition in their experimental designs, which might have imposed a limit on ecological validity because group membership may not be easily changed in reality. In this study, we maintained the same group composition but varied the subgroup composition. We developed a public good dilemmas paradigm in which participants were assigned to one of the four conditions (high- vs. low-efficacy; homogeneous vs. heterogeneous subgroup) to produce their endowments and then to decide how much to contribute. We found that individuals in homogeneous and heterogeneous subgroups produced a similar amount and proportion of contribution, which was due to the two mediating effects that counteracted each other, namely (a) perceived efficacy relative to subgroup and (b) expectation of contribution of other subgroup members. This paper demonstrates both the pros and cons of arranging people into homogeneous and heterogeneous subgroups of efficacy.

Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201473 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 01473&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0201473

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0201473

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().