IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/lau/crdeep/22.10.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Salience in Public Goods Games

Author

Listed:
  • Deborah Kistler
  • Su Nanxu
  • Christian Thoeni

Abstract

We study the effect of three salience manipulations on cooperation in a standard public goods game. A standard social preferences model enriched by salience weights provides hypotheses about the expected effects of our salience manipulations. We test these predictions in a laboratory experiment using different techniques to manipulate the salience of either the highest or lowest contribution in the group. We find no systematic effect of the salience manipulation on cooperation,even though our regression analysis suggests that subjects’contributions are positively linked to the salient contribution. This is because subjects systematically reduce their contributions in the maximum condition relative the minimum condition. These two effects offset each other, resulting in contribution levels which are surprisingly unresponsive to our salience manipulations.

Suggested Citation

  • Deborah Kistler & Su Nanxu & Christian Thoeni, 2022. "Salience in Public Goods Games," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 22.10, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    • Handle: RePEc:lau:crdeep:22.10
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.unil.ch/de/files/live/sites/de/files/working-papers/22.10.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Croson, Rachel T. A., 2000. "Thinking like a game theorist: factors affecting the frequency of equilibrium play," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 41(3), pages 299-314, March.
    2. Akerlof, George A, 1991. "Procrastination and Obedience," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 1-19, May.
    3. Engel, Christoph & Kube, Sebastian & Kurschilgen, Michael, 2021. "Managing expectations: How selective information affects cooperation and punishment in social dilemma games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 111-136.
    4. Anirban Mukhopadhyay & Jaideep Sengupta & Suresh Ramanathan, 2008. "Recalling Past Temptations: An Information-Processing Perspective on the Dynamics of Self-Control," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 35(4), pages 586-599, August.
    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. Sandra Ludwig & Julia Nafziger, 2011. "Beliefs about overconfidence," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 70(4), pages 475-500, April.
    2. Thommes, Kirsten & Vyrastekova, Jana & Akkerman, Agnes, 2015. "Behavioral spillovers from freeriding in multilevel interactions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 78-87.
    3. Lorko, Matej & Servátka, Maroš & Zhang, Le, 2023. "Hidden inefficiency: Strategic inflation of project schedules," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 313-326.
    4. Eguia, Jon X. & Llorente-Saguer, Aniol & Morton, Rebecca & Nicolò, Antonio, 2018. "Equilibrium selection in sequential games with imperfect information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 465-483.
    5. Dufwenberg, Martin & Gächter, Simon & Hennig-Schmidt, Heike, 2011. "The framing of games and the psychology of play," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 459-478.
    6. López-Pérez, Raúl & Vorsatz, Marc, 2010. "On approval and disapproval: Theory and experiments," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 527-541, August.
    7. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    8. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2012. "Fooling the Nice Guys: The effect of lying about contributions on public good provision and punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-11, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    9. Christian Thoeni & Simon Gaechter, 2011. "Peer Effects and Social Preferences in Voluntary Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2011-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    10. Bigoni, Maria & Le Coq, Chloé & Fridolfsson, Sven-Olof & Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 2008. "Risk Aversion, Prospect Theory, and Strategic Risk in Law Enforcement: Evidence From an Antitrust Experiment," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 696, Stockholm School of Economics.
    11. Kaushik Basu & Leonardo Becchetti & Luca Stanca, 2011. "Experiments with the Traveler’s Dilemma: welfare, strategic choice and implicit collusion," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 37(4), pages 575-595, October.
    12. Anastasios Koukoumelis & M. Vittoria Levati, 2014. "Does expressing disapproval influence future cooperation? - An experimental study," Jena Economics Research Papers 2014-022, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    13. Sheth, Jesal D., 2021. "Disclosure of information under competition: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 158-180.
    14. Mariana Blanco & Dirk Engelmann & Alexander Koch & Hans-Theo Normann, 2010. "Belief elicitation in experiments: is there a hedging problem?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(4), pages 412-438, December.
    15. Benistant, Julien & Galeotti, Fabio & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2022. "Competition, information, and the erosion of morals," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 204(C), pages 148-163.
    16. Gächter, Simon & Renner, Elke, 2018. "Leaders as role models and ‘belief managers’ in social dilemmas," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 321-334.
    17. Despoina Alempaki & Andrew M. Colman & Felix Kölle & Graham Loomes & Briony D. Pulford, 2022. "Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(2), pages 656-679, April.
    18. Christian D. Schade & Avichai Snir, 2020. "A lab test on the decision not to decide," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 13(3), pages 1253-1291, November.
    19. Heim, Réka & Huber, Jürgen, 2019. "Leading-by-example and third-party punishment: Experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 24(C).
    20. Ganga Shreedhar, Alessandro Tavoni, Carmen Marchiori, 2018. "Monitoring and punishment networks in a common-pool resource dilemma: experimental evidence," GRI Working Papers 292, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    salience; inequality aversion; experiment; public goods game;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • 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:lau:crdeep:22.10. 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: Christina Seld (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deelsch.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.