Conditional Cooperation: Evidence for the Role of Self-Control

Peter Martinsson, Kristian Ove R. Myrseth () and Conny Wollbrant
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Kristian Ove R. Myrseth: ESMT European School of Management and Technology, Berlin, Germany

No 459, Working Papers in Economics from University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics

Abstract: When facing the opportunity to allocate resources between oneself and others, individuals may experience a self-control conflict between urges to act selfishly and preferences to act pro-socially. We explore the domain of conditional cooperation, and we test the hypothesis that increased expectations about others’ average contribution increases own contributions to public goods more when self-control is high than when it is low. We pair a subtle framing technique with a public goods experiment. Consistent with our hypothesis, we find that conditionally cooperative behavior is stronger (i.e., less imperfect) when expectations of high contributions are accompanied by high levels of self-control.

Keywords: Self-control; Pro-social behavior; Public good experiment; Conditional cooperation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D03 D64 D70 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2010-08-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-exp, nep-ltv and nep-pbe
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