The Role of Choice in Social Dilemma Experiments

Frank Maier-Rigaud and Jose Apesteguia

No 2003_7, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: On the basis of problems related to asymmetric information, self-governance has been proposed and often empirically found to be superior to the external imposition of rules in social dilemma situations. The present paper suggests and experimentally analyses a different line of argument, namely to what extent behavioral aspects can explain these findings. We study this hypothesis using the simplest, most general dilemma form: the prisoner’s dilemma (PD). We compare behavior when players are given the possibility of choosing between two different representations of the same PD, to behavior when players are externally assigned to play a specific game. We find that cooperation rates are significantly higher in the games that were chosen.

Keywords: Freedom of Choice; Self-governance; Social Dilemmas; Framing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 C91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2003-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.coll.mpg.de/pdf_dat/2003_07online.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Role of Choice in Social Dilemma Experiments (2003)
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:mpg:wpaper:2003_07

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marc Martin ().