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Volunteering at the Workplace under Incomplete Information: Teamsize Does Not Matter

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  • Adrian Hillenbrand

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods)

  • Tobias Werner
  • Fabian Winter

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods)

Abstract

Volunteering is a widespread allocation mechanism at the workplace and emerges naturally in open-source software development, the generation of online knowledge platforms, and to some extent in “agile” work environments. Using a field experiment with 8 treatments and close to 2,800 workers on an online labor market, we study the effect of team size on volunteering at the workplace under incomplete information. In stark contrast to the theoretical predictions, we find no effect of team size on volunteering behavior. With the use of our control treatments, we can show that workers react to free-riding incentives provided by the volunteering setting in general, but do not react strategically to the team size. We show that the result is robust to several further factors.

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian Hillenbrand & Tobias Werner & Fabian Winter, 2020. "Volunteering at the Workplace under Incomplete Information: Teamsize Does Not Matter," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2020_04, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    • Handle: RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2020_04
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Campos-Mercade, Pol, 2022. "When are groups less moral than individuals?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 20-36.
    2. Campos-Mercade, Pol, 2021. "The volunteer’s dilemma explains the bystander effect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 646-661.
    3. Guha, Brishti, 2022. "Ambiguity aversion, group size, and deliberation: Costly information and decision accuracy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 115-133.
    4. Brishti Guha, 2020. "Revisiting the volunteer's dilemma: group size and public good provision in the presence of some ambiguity aversion," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(2), pages 1308-1318.

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