Guilt and participation

Amrish Patel and Alec Smith
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Alec Smith: Virginia Tech University

No 2018-01, University of East Anglia School of Economics Working Paper Series from School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.

Abstract: How does guilt affect participation in providing public goods? We characterise and analyse completely mixed symmetric equilibria (CMSE) in participation games where players are guilt averse. We find that relative to material preferences, guilt aversion can: facilitate the existence of CMSE; increase or decrease participation; and imply that group size has a non-monotonic effect on participation. Using our equilibrium characterisation we also re-analyse experimental data on participation games and find a low, but positive, guilt sensitivity parameter.

Keywords: participation; threshold public good; volunteer's dilemma; psychological games; guilt aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-mic
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

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