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Control Without Deception: Individual Behaviour in Free-Riding Experiments Revisited

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Author Info
Nicholas Bardsley ()

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Abstract

Lying to participants offers an experimenter the enticing prospect of making “others' behaviour†a controlled variable, but is eschewed by experimental economists because it may pollute the pool of subjects. This paper proposes and implements a new experimental design, the Conditional Information Lottery, which offers all the benefits of deception without actually deceiving anyone. The design should be suitable for most economics experiments, and works by a modification of an already standard device, the Random Lottery incentive system. The deceptive scenarios of designs which use deceit are replaced with fictitious scenarios, each of which, from a subject's viewpoint, has a chance of being true. The design is implemented in a sequential play public good experiment prompted by Weimann's (1994) result, from a deceptive design, that subjects are more sensitive to free-riding than cooperation on the part of others. The experiment provides similar results to Weimann's, in that subjects are at least as cooperative when uninformed about others' behaviour as they are if reacting to high contributions. No deception is used and the data cohere well both internally and with other public goods experiments. In addition, simultaneous play is found to be more efficient than sequential play, and subjects contribute less at the end of a sequence than at the start. The results suggest pronounced elements of overconfidence, egoism and (biased) reciprocity in behaviour, which may explain decay in contributions in repeated play designs. The experiment shows there is a workable alternative to deception. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2000

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Publisher Info
Article provided by Springer in its journal Experimental Economics.

Volume (Year): 3 (2000)
Issue (Month): 3 (December)
Pages: 215-240
Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Handle: RePEc:kap:expeco:v:3:y:2000:i:3:p:215-240

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Related research
Keywords: experimental economics; deception; reciprocity; public goods;

References listed on IDEAS
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  1. Isaac, R Mark & Walker, James M, 1988. "Communication and Free-Riding Behavior: The Voluntary Contribution Mechanism," Economic Inquiry, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(4), pages 585-608, October.
  2. Beattie, Jane & Loomes, Graham, 1997. "The Impact of Incentives upon Risky Choice Experiments," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 155-68, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Andreoni, James, 1988. "Why free ride? : Strategies and learning in public goods experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 291-304, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Gary Charness & Matthew Rabin, 1999. "Social Preferences: Some Simple Tests and a New Model," Economics Working Papers 441, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jan 2000. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Jordi Brandts & Gary Charness, 1998. "Hot vs. Cold: Sequential Responses and Preference Stability in Experimental Games," Economics Working Papers 321, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. [Downloadable!]
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  6. McDaniel, Tanga & Starmer, Chris, 1998. "Experimental economics and deception: A comment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 403-409, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Holt, Charles A, 1986. "Preference Reversals and the Independence Axiom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(3), pages 508-15, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Cubitt, Robin P & Starmer, Chris & Sugden, Robert, 1998. "Dynamic Choice and the Common Ratio Effect: An Experimental Investigation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(450), pages 1362-80, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Knez, Marc J. & Camerer, Colin F., 1995. "Outside Options and Social Comparison in 3-Player Ultimatum Game Experiments," Working Papers 920, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences. [Downloadable!]
  10. Bonetti, Shane, 1998. "Experimental economics and deception," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 377-395, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  11. Weimann, Joachim, 1994. "Individual behaviour in a free riding experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 185-200, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  12. Kahneman, Daniel & Tversky, Amos, 1979. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 47(2), pages 263-91, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Mitzkewitz, Michael & Nagel, Rosemarie, 1993. "Experimental Results on Ultimatum Games with Incomplete Information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 171-98.
  14. Wilcox, Nathaniel T, 1993. "Lottery Choice: Incentives, Complexity and Decision Time," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(421), pages 1397-1417, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  15. Sugden, Robert, 1984. "Reciprocity: The Supply of Public Goods through Voluntary Contributions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 94(376), pages 772-87, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  16. Theo Offerman, 1999. "Hurting hurts more than Helping helps: The Role of the Self-serving Bias," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 99-018/1, Tinbergen Institute. [Downloadable!]
  17. Guth, Werner & Huck, Steffen & Ockenfels, Peter, 1996. "Two-Level Ultimatum Bargaining with Incomplete Information: An Experimental Study," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(436), pages 593-604, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Fehr, Ernst & Gachter, Simon, 1998. "Reciprocity and economics: The economic implications of Homo Reciprocans1," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 845-859, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Starmer, Chris & Sugden, Robert, 1991. "Does the Random-Lottery Incentive System Elicit True Preferences? An Experimental Investigation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(4), pages 971-78, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Hey, John D., 1998. "Experimental economics and deception: A comment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 397-401, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  21. Robin Cubitt & Chris Starmer & Robert Sugden, 1998. "On the Validity of the Random Lottery Incentive System," Experimental Economics, Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 115-131, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Heijden, E. van der & Moxnes, E., 2003. "Leading by example? Investment decisions in a mixed sequential-simultaneous public bad experiment," Discussion Paper 38, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
  2. Luigi Mittone & Francesca Bortolami, 2007. "Free riding and norms of control: self determination and imposition. An experimental comparison," CEEL Working Papers 0704, Computable and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia. [Downloadable!]
  3. Nicholas Bardsley & Peter Moffatt, 2005. "The Experimetrics of Public Goods: Inferring Motivations from Contributions," Discussion Papers 2005-09, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Andreas Ortmann & Ralph Hertwig, 2001. "The Costs of Deception: Evidence From Psychology," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp191, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economic Institute, Prague. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Nicholas Bardsley & Peter G. Moffatt, 2000. "An Econometric Analysis of Voluntary Contributions," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 00-111/1, Tinbergen Institute. [Downloadable!]
  6. Werner Güth & M. Vittoria Levati & Matthias Sutter & Eline van der Heijden, 2004. "Leadership and cooperation in public goods experiments," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2004-29, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group. [Downloadable!]
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