IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecinqu/v53y2015i1p574-588.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competition And Cooperation In A Public Goods Game: A Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Ned Augenblick
  • Jesse M. Cunha

Abstract

We explore the effects of competitive and cooperative motivations on contributions in a field experiment. A total of 10,000 potential political donors received solicitations referencing past contribution behavior of members of the competing party (competition treatment), the same party (cooperative treatment), or no past contribution information (control). We first theoretically analyze the effect of these treatments on the contribution behavior of agents with different social preferences in a modified intergroup public good (IPG) game. Then, we report the empirical results: Contribution rates in the competitive, cooperative, and control treatments were 1.45%, 1.08%, and 0.78%, respectively. With the exception of one large contribution, the distribution of contributions in the competitive treatment first order stochastically dominates that of the cooperative treatment. Qualitatively, it appears that the cooperative treatment induced more contributions around the common monetary reference point, while the competitive treatment led to more contributions at twice this amount. These results suggest that eliciting competitive rather than cooperative motivations can lead to higher contributions in IPG settings. (JEL D72, H41, C93)

Suggested Citation

  • Ned Augenblick & Jesse M. Cunha, 2015. "Competition And Cooperation In A Public Goods Game: A Field Experiment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 53(1), pages 574-588, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecinqu:v:53:y:2015:i:1:p:574-588
    DOI: 10.1111/ecin.12105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecin.12105
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ecin.12105?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
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhao, Jinhua & Wang, Xianjia & Niu, Lei & Gu, Cuiling, 2021. "Environmental feedback and cooperation in climate change dilemma," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 397(C).
    2. Tamas Bereczkei & Zsolt Peter Szabo & Andrea Czibor, 2015. "Abusing Good Intentions," SAGE Open, , vol. 5(2), pages 21582440155, June.
    3. Martin Kolmar & Andreas Wagener, 2019. "Group Identities in Conflicts," Homo Oeconomicus: Journal of Behavioral and Institutional Economics, Springer, vol. 36(3), pages 165-192, December.
    4. Adena, Maja & Hakimov, Rustamdjan & Huck, Steffen, 2020. "Charitable giving by the poor: A field experiment in Kyrgyzstan," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2019-305r, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, revised 2020.
    5. Annarita Colasante & Aurora García-Gallego & Andrea Morone & Tiziana Temerario, 2017. "The utopia of cooperation: does intra-group competition drive out free riding?," Working Papers 2017/08, Economics Department, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón (Spain).
    6. Barton, Jared & Castillo, Marco & Petrie, Ragan, 2016. "Negative campaigning, fundraising, and voter turnout: A field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 99-113.
    7. Yansong Li & Zhenliang Liu & Yuqian Wang & Edmund Derrington & Frederic Moisan & Jean-Claude Dreher, 2023. "Spillover effects of competition outcome on future risky cooperation," Post-Print hal-04325682, HAL.
    8. Pedro Naso; Tania Theoduloz; Nicholas Tyack; Dambala Gelo; Mare Sarr; Timothy Swanson, 2021. "Using Information to Improve Global Cooperation: A Climate Change Experiment," CIES Research Paper series 72-2021, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

    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:53:y:2015:i:1:p:574-588. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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.