This paper discusses the empirical evidence from lab and field experiments on voluntary cooperation. We present the most important findings from numerous public goods experiments and argue that conditional cooperation (contributions are conditional on other people’s contribution) is a primary motivation for many people to (not) contribute to the public good. We also discuss four experiments that test implications of conditional cooperation. We see these experiments as four behavioral models that can help interpreting naturally occurring phenomena, like charitable giving, work morale, and tax evasion. We conclude by discussing some policy implications of the observed behavioral regularities.
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Paper provided by The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham in its series Discussion Papers with number
2006-03.
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.)
Martin G. Kocher & Todd L. Cherry & Stephan Kroll & Robert J. Netzer & Matthias Sutter, 2007.
"Conditional cooperation on three continents,"
Working Papers
2007-02, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck.
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