Participation in and provision of public goods: Does granularity matter?

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - Tập 16 - Trang 265-285 - 2020
Ricardo Arlegi1, Juan M. Benito-Ostolaza1, Nuria Osés-Eraso1
1Department of Economics, Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics (INARBE), Universidad Pública de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain

Tóm tắt

We use public goods games to experimentally investigate the effect of granularity (i.e., the degree of divisibility of the space of feasible contribution options) on participation (whether individuals contribute or not to the public good) and public goods provision (total contribution to the public good). Our results show that granularity has a significant effect on participation, mainly when coarser granularity eliminates the possibility of small contributions. However, this change in participation does not lead to a significant change in the total provision of the public good. These results are aligned with other experimental field results obtained in the context of donations and fundraising.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Anderson LR, Mellor JM, Milyo J (2004) Social capital and contributions in a public-goods experiment. Am Econ Rev 94(2):373–376 Andreoni J (1990) Impure altruism and donations to public goods: a theory of warm-glow giving. Econ J 100(401):464–477 Bartling B, Fehr E, Herz H (2014) The intrinsic value of decision rights. Econometrica 82(6):2005–2039 Benito-Ostolaza JM, Hernandez P, Sanchis- Llopis JA (2016) Do individuals with higher cognitive ability play more strategically? J Behav Exp Econ 64:5–11 Bowles S, Gintis H (2002) Social capital and community governance. Econ J 112(483):419–436 Brañas Garza P, García-Muñoz T, Hernán González R (2012) Cognitive effort in the beauty contest game. J Econ Behav Organ 83:254–260 Brockner J, Guzzi B, Kane J, ans Levine E, Shaplen K (1984) Organizational fundrasing: further evidence on the effect of legitimizing small donations. J Consum Res 11:611–614 Cadsbya C, Maynesb E (1999) Voluntary provision of threshold public goods with continuous contributions: experimental evidence. J Public Econ 71:53–73 Carpenter JP, Daniere AG, Takahashi LM (2004) Cooperation, trust, and social capital in southeast asian urban slums. J Econ Behav Organ 55(4):533–551 Carpenter P, Just M, Shell P (1990) What one intelligence test measures: a theoretical account of the processing in the raven progressive matrices test. Psychol Rev 97(3):404–431 Cialdini R, Schroeder D (1976) Increasing compliance by legitimizing paltry contributions: when even a penny helps. J Pers Soc Psychol 34(4):599–604 Croson R, Shang J (2008) The impact of downward social information on contribution decisions. Exp Econ 11:221–233 Desmet P (1999) Asking for less to obtain more. J Interact Market 13(3):55–65 Doob A, McLaughlin D (1989) Ask and you shall be given: request size and donations to a good cause. J Appl Soc Psychol 19(12):1049–1056 Fehr E, Gachter S (2000) Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. Am Econ Rev 90(4):980–994 Fischbacher U (2007) z-tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Exp Econ 10:171–178 Fischbacher U, Gächter S, Fehr E (2001) Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Econ Lett 71(3):397–404 Freedman J, Fraser S (1966) Compliance without pressure: the foot-in-the-door technique. J Pers Soc Psychol 4:95–202 Frey B, Meier S (2004) Social comparisons and pro-social behavior: testing “conditional cooperation” in a field experiment. Am Econ Rev 94(5):1717–1722 Gangadharan L, Nikiforakis N (2009) Does the size of the action set matter for cooperation? Econ Lett 104:115–117 Gill D, Prowse V (2016) Cognitive ability, character skills, and learning to play equilibrium: a leve-k-analysis. J Polit Econ 124(6):1619–1676 Gravel N (1994) Can a ranking of opportunity sets attach an intrinsic importance to freedom of choice? Am Econ Rev 84(2):454–458 Gray J, Thompson P (2004) Neurobiology of intelligence: science and ethics. Nat Rev Neurosci 5(6):471–482 Grootaert C (2003) Social capital: the missing link. In: Dekker P, Uslaner EM (eds) Social capital and participation in everyday life, chapter 8. Roudledge, London Huang P (2020) Trump and who: How much does the U.S. give? What’s the impact of a halt in funding? NPR, retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/15/834666123/trump-and-who-how-much-does-the-u-sgive-whats-the-impact-of-a-halt-in-funding Knack S, Keefer P (1997) Does social capital have an economic payoff? A cross-country investigation. Q J Econ 112(4):1251–1288 Lange A, List JA, Price MK (2007) Using lotteries to finance public goods: theory and experimental evidence. Int Econ Rev 48(3):901–927 Leonard T, Croson R, de Oliveira A (2010) Social capital and public goods. J Soc Econ 30:474–481 Martin R, Randal J (2008) How is donation behaviour affected by the donations of others? J Econ Behav Organ 67(1):228–238 Meinzen-Dick R (1997) Farmer participation in irrigation, a 20 years of experience and lessons for the future. Irrigat Drain Syst 11(2):103–118 Name-Correa A, Yildirim H (2016) Giving in to social pressure. Games Econo Behav 99:99–116 Ostrom E (1995) Incentives, rules of the game, and development. In: Bruno M, Pleskovicr B (eds) Annual bank conference on development economicsk. World Bank, Washington Pattanaik PK, Xu Y (1990) On ranking opportunity sets in terms of freedom of choice. Louvain Econ Rev 56(3–4):383–390 Putnam R (1993) Making democracy work: civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton University Press, Princeton Putnam R (2000) Bowling alone: the collapse and revival of American community. Simon and Schuster, New York Raven J (1936) Mental tests used in generic studies: the performance of related individuals on tests mainly educative and mainly reproductive (M.Sc. thesis). London: University of London Reiley D, Samek, A (2015) How do suggested donations affect charitable gifts? Evidence from a fields experiment in public broadcasting. In: SPI working paper series, Universty of Chicago, vol 142-SPI Schniter E, Sheremeta R, Shields T (2015) The problem with all-or-nothing trust games: what others choose not to do matters in trust-based exchange. In: MPRA Paper, no. 68561 Sen A (1988) Freedom of choice: concept and content. Eur Econ Rev 32(2–3):269–294 Shang J, Croson R (2009) A field experiment in charitable contribution: the impact of social information on the voluntary provision of public goods. Econ J 119:1422–1439 Shearman S, Yoo J (2007) “Even a penny will help”: legitimization of paltry donation and social proof in soliciting donation to a charitable organization. Commun Res Rep 24(4):271–282 Sobel J (2002) Can we trust social capital? J Econ Lit 40(1):139–154 Weyant J, Smith S (1987) Getting more by asking for less: the effects of request size on donations of charity. J Appl Soc Psychol 17(4):392–400 Wollebaek D, Selle P (2003) Participation and social capital formation: Norway in a comparative perspective 1. Scand Polit Stud 26(1):67–91 Zhang Y, Fu F, Wu T, Xie GLW (2013) A tale of two contribution mechanisms for nonlinear public goods. Sci Rep 3(2021):1–5