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

Michela Chessa () and Patrick Loiseau ()
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Michela Chessa: GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (1965 - 2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UniCA - Université Côte d'Azur
Patrick Loiseau: FAIRPLAY - IA coopérative : équité, vie privée, incitations - CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - Criteo AI Lab - Criteo [Paris] - Centre Inria de l'Institut Polytechnique de Paris - Centre Inria de Saclay - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique

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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)
Date: 2024-04-12
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://inria.hal.science/hal-04943298v1
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Published in Public Choice, 2024, 201 (1-2), pp.237-261. ⟨10.1007/s11127-024-01165-1⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04943298

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-024-01165-1

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