Yes, I'll do it: a large-scale experiment on the volunteer's dilemma

Anita Kopányi-Peuker

No 18-072/II, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: In many real-life situations people face a simple decision whether to volunteer or not to provide some benefit for themselves and also for others. This research investigates the effects of the group size and the magnitude of the volunteering cost in a controlled large-scale laboratory experiment, where subjects play the volunteer’s dilemma only once. The experiment varies group sizes ranging from groups of 3 to about 100, and 2 different cost/benefit ratios. Results show that high cost reduces volunteering probability only in the smallest groups, but not for other group sizes. Furthermore, non-monotonic group size effect is found on the individual volunteering decisions. These findings are not in line with the mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium prediction. Subjects volunteer more often in most treatments than the Nash prediction which benefits them on average compared to the Nash prediction.

Keywords: Volunteer's dilemma; coordination; group size; large-scale experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth and nep-hpe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://papers.tinbergen.nl/18072.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Yes, I’ll do it: A large-scale experiment on the volunteer’s dilemma (2019)
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:tin:wpaper:20180072

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tinbergen Office +31 (0)10-4088900 (discussionpapers@tinbergen.nl).