Are conditional cooperators willing to forgo efficiency gains? Evidence from a public goods experiment

Maria Levati, Matteo Ploner and Stefan Traub ()

New Zealand Economic Papers, 2011, vol. 45, issue 1-2, 47-57

Abstract: We use a two-person public goods experiment to investigate how much agents value conditional cooperation when symmetric positive contributions entail efficiency losses. Asymmetric marginal per capita returns allow only the high-productivity player to increase group payoffs when contributing positive amounts. Asymmetric contributions, however, yield unequal individual payoffs. To assess a priori cooperative preferences, we measure individual 'value-orientations' by means of the decomposed game technique. We find that contributions remain negligible throughout the experiment, suggesting that people are not willing to contribute positive amounts if this may lead to damage efficiency.

Keywords: public goods experiments; conditional cooperation; fairness; efficiency; social values (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1080/00779954.2011.556069

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