The Dynamics of Individual Preferences in Repeated Public Good Experiments

Markus Sass () and Joachim Weimann
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Markus Sass: Faculty of Economics and Management, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg

No 120002, FEMM Working Papers from Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Faculty of Economics and Management

Abstract: We investigate the stability of individual behavior in a repeated public good experiment over time by reinviting subjects back to the lab up to four times in one week intervals. We exclude effects due to learning about others' behavior and reputation building by employing a non-learning and non-reputation environment: subjects are neither told nor paid their earnings until the very end of their participation and thus deprived of any feedback information and strategic possibilities to signal their intentions. This experimental design thus leaves unstable preferences as the most likely source for unstable behavior. We observe that, in the first wave of the experiment, subjects contribute to the public good in accordance to other-regarding preferences, but become more selfish in the latter waves of the experiment and consequently contributions to the public good decrease over time. The decline is mainly caused by initially conditional cooperators who turn into free riders over the course of the experiment.

Keywords: Individual preferences; consistency; stability; experimental economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C73 C90 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2012-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mag:wpaper:120002

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