Cooperation and confusion in public goods games: confusion cannot explain contribution patterns

Armin Granulo (), Rudolf Kerschreiter () and Martin Kocher
Additional contact information
Armin Granulo: Technical University of Munich
Rudolf Kerschreiter: Freie Universität Berlin

Journal of the Economic Science Association, 2023, vol. 9, issue 2, No 9, 308-318

Abstract: Abstract People behave much more cooperatively than predicted by the self-interest hypothesis in social dilemmas such as public goods games. Some studies have suggested that many decision makers cooperate not because of genuine cooperative preferences but because they are confused about the incentive structure of the game—and therefore might not be aware of the dominant strategy. In this research, we experimentally manipulate whether decision makers receive explicit information about which strategies maximize individual income and group income or not. Our data reveal no statistically significant effects of the treatment variation, neither on elicited contribution preferences nor on unconditional contributions and beliefs in a repeated linear public goods game. We conclude that it is unlikely that confusion about optimal strategies explains the widely observed cooperation patterns in social dilemmas such as public goods games.

Keywords: Public goods game; Cooperation; Experiment; Confusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40881-023-00139-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jesaex:v:9:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1007_s40881-023-00139-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/40881

DOI: 10.1007/s40881-023-00139-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Economic Science Association is currently edited by Nikos Nikiforakis and Robert Slonim

More articles in Journal of the Economic Science Association from Springer, Economic Science Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().