IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/adl/wpaper/2010-24.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Confusion and Learning in the Public Goods Game

Author

Listed:
  • Ralph-C Bayer

    (School of Economics, University of Adelaide)

  • Elke Renner

    (University of Nottingham)

  • Rupert Sausgruber

    (University of Copenhagen)

Abstract

We test if confusion and learning could potentially explain all the decay of contributions in the repeated public goods games by implementing a limited information environment to mimic the state of confusion. A comparison shows that the rate of decline is more than twice as high in a standard public goods game. Furthermore, we find that simple learning cannot generate the contribution dynamics, which are commonly attributed to the existence of conditional cooperators. We conclhttps://media.adelaide.edu.au/economics/ic goods games is not a pure artefact of confusion and learning.

Suggested Citation

  • Ralph-C Bayer & Elke Renner & Rupert Sausgruber, 2010. "Confusion and Learning in the Public Goods Game," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2010-24, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.
    • Handle: RePEc:adl:wpaper:2010-24
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.economics.adelaide.edu.au/research/papers/doc/wp2010-24.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Claudia Keser & Frans Van Winden, 2000. "Conditional Cooperation and Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(1), pages 23-39, March.
    2. 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.
    3. Daniel Houser & Robert Kurzban, 2002. "Revisiting Kindness and Confusion in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(4), pages 1062-1069, September.
    4. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    5. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    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. Grolleau, Gilles & Sutan, Angela & Vranceanu, Radu, 2016. "Do people contribute more to intra-temporal or inter-temporal public goods?," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 186-195.
    2. Armin Falk & Urs Fischbacher & Simon G�chter, "undated". "Living in Two Neighborhoods - Social Interactions in the Lab," IEW - Working Papers 150, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    3. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gaechter, 2008. "Heterogeneous Social Preferences And The Dynamics Of Free Riding In Public Good Experiments," Discussion Papers 2008-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    4. 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.
    5. Ferraro Paul J & Vossler Christian A, 2010. "The Source and Significance of Confusion in Public Goods Experiments," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-42, July.
    6. Martin G. Kocher & Peter Martinsson & Kristian Ove R. Myrseth & Conny E. Wollbrant, 2017. "Strong, bold, and kind: self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 44-69, March.
    7. Ralph-C Bayer & Elke Renner & Rupert Sausgruber, 2009. "Confusion and Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Public Goods Games," NRN working papers 2009-22, The Austrian Center for Labor Economics and the Analysis of the Welfare State, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    8. Erik O. Kimbrough & Alexander Vostroknutov, 2016. "Norms Make Preferences Social," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 14(3), pages 608-638, June.
    9. Takafumi Yamakawa & Yoshitaka Okano & Tatsuyoshi Saijo, 2016. "Detecting motives for cooperation in public goods experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 500-512, June.
    10. Urs Fischbacher & Simon G�chter, 2005. "Heterogeneous social preferences and the dynamics of free riding in public goods," IEW - Working Papers 261, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    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. Guillen, Pablo & Fatas, Enrique & Brañas-Garza, Pablo, 2010. "Inducing efficient conditional cooperation patterns in public goods games, an experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 872-883, December.
    13. Goeschl, Timo & Lohse, Johannes, 2018. "Cooperation in public good games. Calculated or confused?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 185-203.
    14. Czap, Hans J. & Czap, Natalia V., 2011. "Donating-selling tradeoffs and the influence of leaders in the environmental goods game," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(6), pages 743-752.
    15. Reuben, E. & Suetens, S., 2008. "Conditional Cooperation : Disentangling Strategic from Non-Strategic Motivations," Other publications TiSEM a44873ae-177f-4f66-9a9c-9, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    16. Kessler, Judd B. & Low, Corinne & Singhal, Monica, 2021. "Social policy instruments and the compliance environment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 192(C), pages 248-267.
    17. Kohei Nitta, 2014. "The Effect of Income Heterogeneity in An Experiment with Global and Local Public Goods," Working Papers 201403, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    18. Alpízar, Francisco & Martinsson, Peter, 2010. "Don’t Tell Me What to Do, Tell Me Who to Follow! - Field Experiment Evidence on Voluntary Donations," Working Papers in Economics 452, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    19. Ambrus, Attila & Pathak, Parag A., 2011. "Cooperation over finite horizons: A theory and experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 500-512.
    20. Fatas, Enrique & Nosenzo, Daniele & Sefton, Martin & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2021. "A self-funding reward mechanism for tax compliance," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public goods experiments; learning; limited information; confusion; conditional cooperation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:adl:wpaper:2010-24. 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: Qazi Haque (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/decadau.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.