IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v62y2024i4p1598-1617.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An experimental comparison of contributions in collective prevention games and public goods games

Author

Listed:
  • Véronique Flambard
  • Fabrice Le Lec
  • Rustam Romaniuc

Abstract

In many collective action problems individuals' contributions increase the probability of a collectively favorable event rather than affect the quantity of public goods provided. Such problems, that we refer to as collective prevention games, remain largely unexplored in the literature. We fill this gap by setting up an experiment where subjects' contributions increase the probability of a fixed collective benefit or reduce the probability of a fixed negative externality. Our main result is a substantial increase in cooperation in the probabilistic loss environment compared to the deterministic one. We explore some behavioral mechanisms that could drive this result.

Suggested Citation

  • Véronique Flambard & Fabrice Le Lec & Rustam Romaniuc, 2024. "An experimental comparison of contributions in collective prevention games and public goods games," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(4), pages 1598-1617, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:62:y:2024:i:4:p:1598-1617
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.13236
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.13236
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.13236?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Simon Gächter & Elke Renner, 2010. "The effects of (incentivized) belief elicitation in public goods experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(3), pages 364-377, September.
    2. Botelho, Anabela & Harrison, Glenn W. & Pinto, Lígia M. Costa & Rutström, Elisabet E., 2009. "Testing static game theory with dynamic experiments: A case study of public goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(1), pages 253-265.3, September.
    3. Garcia, Thomas & Massoni, Sébastien & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2020. "Ambiguity and excuse-driven behavior in charitable giving," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    4. Thöni, Christian & Volk, Stefan, 2018. "Conditional cooperation: Review and refinement," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 37-40.
    5. Stefan Grimm & Martin G. Kocher & Michal Krawczyk & Fabrice Lec, 2021. "Sharing or gambling? On risk attitudes in social contexts," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(4), pages 1075-1104, December.
    6. Daniele Nosenzo & Simone Quercia & Martin Sefton, 2015. "Cooperation in small groups: the effect of group size," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(1), pages 4-14, March.
    7. Scott Barrett & Astrid Dannenberg, 2014. "On the Sensitivity of Collective Action to Uncertainty about Climate Tipping Points," CESifo Working Paper Series 4643, CESifo.
    8. Kocher, Martin G. & Martinsson, Peter & Matzat, Dominik & Wollbrant, Conny, 2015. "The role of beliefs, trust, and risk in contributions to a public good," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 236-244.
    9. Guido, Andrea & Robbett, Andrea & Romaniuc, Rustam, 2019. "Group formation and cooperation in social dilemmas: A survey and meta-analytic evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 159(C), pages 192-209.
    10. Ben Greiner, 2015. "Subject pool recruitment procedures: organizing experiments with ORSEE," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 114-125, July.
    11. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    12. Vesely, Stepan & Wengström, Erik, 2017. "Risk and Cooperation: Experimental Evidence from Stochastic Public Good Games," Working Papers 2017:3, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    13. François Cochard & Alexandre Flage & Gilles Grolleau & Angela Sutan, 2020. "Are individuals more generous in loss contexts?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(4), pages 845-866, December.
    14. Gächter, Simon & Kölle, Felix & Quercia, Simone, 2022. "Preferences and perceptions in Provision and Maintenance public goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 338-355.
    15. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W Imbens & Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2023. "When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 1-35.
    16. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    17. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.
    18. Tversky, Amos & Kahneman, Daniel, 1992. "Advances in Prospect Theory: Cumulative Representation of Uncertainty," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 297-323, October.
    19. Dickinson, David L., 1998. "The voluntary contributions mechanism with uncertain group payoffs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 517-533, May.
    20. Béatrice Boulu-Reshef & Samuel H. Brott & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2017. "Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 68(5), pages 785-791.
    21. Michal Krawczyk & Fabrice Le Lec, 2010. "‘Give me a chance!’ An experiment in social decision under risk," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 500-511, December.
    22. Goeree, Jacob K. & Holt, Charles A. & Laury, Susan K., 2002. "Private costs and public benefits: unraveling the effects of altruism and noisy behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 255-276, February.
    23. Andreas Diekmann, 1985. "Volunteer's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 29(4), pages 605-610, December.
    24. Cox, James C. & Friedman, Daniel & Gjerstad, Steven, 2007. "A tractable model of reciprocity and fairness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 17-45, April.
    25. Valerio Capraro & Hélène Barcelo, 2015. "Group Size Effect on Cooperation in One-Shot Social Dilemmas II: Curvilinear Effect," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(7), pages 1-11, July.
    26. Christine L. Exley, 2016. "Excusing Selfishness in Charitable Giving: The Role of Risk," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(2), pages 587-628.
    27. Rick L. Williams, 2000. "A Note on Robust Variance Estimation for Cluster-Correlated Data," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 56(2), pages 645-646, June.
    28. Cristian L. Bayes & Luis Valdivieso, 2016. "A beta inflated mean regression model for fractional response variables," Journal of Applied Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(10), pages 1814-1830, August.
    29. Quiggin, John, 1982. "A theory of anticipated utility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 323-343, December.
    30. Charles A. Holt & Susan K. Laury, 2002. "Risk Aversion and Incentive Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1644-1655, December.
    31. Simon Gächter & Felix Kölle & Simone Quercia, 2017. "Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 1(9), pages 650-656, September.
    32. Fujimoto, Hiroaki & Park, Eun-Soo, 2010. "Framing effects and gender differences in voluntary public goods provision experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 455-457, August.
    33. J. Michelle Brock & Andreas Lange & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2013. "Dictating the Risk: Experimental Evidence on Giving in Risky Environments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 415-437, February.
    34. Emel Filiz-Ozbay & Erkut Y. Ozbay, 2007. "Auctions with Anticipated Regret: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(4), pages 1407-1418, September.
    35. Scott Barrett & Astrid Dannenberg, 2014. "Sensitivity of collective action to uncertainty about climate tipping points," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 36-39, January.
    36. Vincent Théroude & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2020. "Cooperation in a risky world," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 22(2), pages 388-407, April.
    37. Caleb A. Cox & Brock Stoddard, 2021. "Common-Value Public Goods and Informational Social Dilemmas," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 343-369, May.
    38. Lata Gangadharan & Veronika Nemes, 2009. "Experimental Analysis Of Risk And Uncertainty In Provisioning Private And Public Goods," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(1), pages 146-164, January.
    39. Cox, Caleb A., 2015. "Decomposing the effects of negative framing in linear public goods games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 63-65.
    40. Edward Cartwright, 2016. "A comment on framing effects in linear public good games," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(1), pages 73-84, May.
    41. James Andreoni & John Miller, 2002. "Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 737-753, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo & Nardi, Chiara & Pizziol, Veronica, 2024. "Cooperation is unaffected by the threat of severe adverse events in public goods games," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    2. Gächter, Simon & Kölle, Felix & Quercia, Simone, 2022. "Preferences and perceptions in Provision and Maintenance public goods," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 338-355.
    3. Malte Baader & Simon Gaechter & Kyeongtae Lee & Martin Sefton, 2022. "Social preferences and the variability of conditional cooperation," Discussion Papers 2022-13, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    4. Weber, Till O. & Schulz, Jonathan F. & Beranek, Benjamin & Lambarraa-Lehnhardt, Fatima & Gächter, Simon, 2023. "The behavioral mechanisms of voluntary cooperation across culturally diverse societies: Evidence from the US, the UK, Morocco, and Turkey," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 134-152.
    5. Takeuchi, Ai & Seki, Erika, 2023. "Coordination and free-riding problems in the provision of multiple public goods," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 95-121.
    6. Vincent Théroude & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2017. "Cooperation in a risky world," Working Papers halshs-01443917, HAL.
    7. Vincent Théroude & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2017. "Cooperation in a risky world," Working Papers 1704, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    8. Edward Cartwright & Michalis Drouvelis, 2024. "Social framing effects in leadership by example: Preferences or beliefs?," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(4), pages 1629-1651, October.
    9. Freundt, Jana & Lange, Andreas, 2021. "On the voluntary provision of public goods under risk," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    10. Dorner, Zack & Tucker, Steven & Hassan, Gazi M, 2024. "Heterogeneous productivity stabilizes public good contributions under certainty, uncertainty and ambiguity," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    11. Lisa Bruttel & Werner Güth & Juri Nithammer & Andreas Orland, 2022. "Inefficient Cooperation Under Stochastic and Strategic Uncertainty," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 66(4-5), pages 755-782, May.
    12. David M. McEvoy & Tobias Haller & Esther Blanco, 2022. "The Role of Non-Binding Pledges in Social Dilemmas with Mitigation and Adaptation," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 81(4), pages 685-710, April.
    13. Furtner, Nadja C. & Kocher, Martin G. & Martinsson, Peter & Matzat, Dominik & Wollbrant, Conny, 2021. "Gender and cooperative preferences," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 39-48.
    14. Goeschl, Timo & Soldà, Alice, 2024. "(Un)Trustworthy pledges and cooperation in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 106-119.
    15. Vesely, Stepan & Wengström, Erik, 2017. "Risk and Cooperation: Experimental Evidence from Stochastic Public Good Games," Working Papers 2017:3, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    16. Blanco, Esther & Dutcher, E. Glenn & Haller, Tobias, 2020. "Social dilemmas with public and private insurance against losses," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 924-937.
    17. Billur Aksoy & Silvana Krasteva, 2020. "When does less information translate into more giving to public goods?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(4), pages 1148-1177, December.
    18. Heinz, Matthias & Schumacher, Heiner, 2017. "Signaling cooperation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 199-216.
    19. Serdarevic, Nina & Strømland, Eirik & Tjøtta, Sigve, 2021. "It pays to be nice: The benefits of cooperating in markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    20. Buso, Irene Maria & Ferrari, Lorenzo & Güth, Werner & Lorè, Luisa & Spadoni, Lorenzo, 2024. "Testing isomorphic invariance across social dilemma games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 223(C), pages 1-20.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:62:y:2024:i:4:p:1598-1617. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/weaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.