Visibility of Contributions and Cost of Information: An Experiment on Public Goods
Abstract
We experimentally investigate the impact of visibility of information about contributors on contributions in the public goods game. We systematically consider several treatments that are similar to a wide range of situations in practice. First, we vary the cost of viewing identifiable information about contributors. Second, we vary recognizing all, top or bottom contributors. We find that recognizing all contributors significantly increases contributions relative to the baseline. Recognizing only the top contributors is not significantly different from not recognizing contributors, but recognizing only the bottom contributors is as effective as recognizing all contributors. When viewing information about contributors is costly, there is no significant difference in contributions as compared to the case where all contributors are displayed by default. This effect holds even though the identities of contributors are viewed less than ten percent of the time.Download Info
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Paper provided by Chapman University, Economic Science Institute in its series Working Papers with number 10-22.Length: 24 pages
Date of creation: 2010
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:chu:wpaper:10-22
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Related research
Keywords: public-goods; information; competition;Find related papers by JEL classification:
- C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
- C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
- NEP-ALL-2010-11-20 (All new papers)
- NEP-CBE-2010-11-20 (Cognitive & Behavioural Economics)
- NEP-EXP-2010-11-20 (Experimental Economics)
- NEP-PBE-2010-11-20 (Public Economics)
- NEP-PUB-2010-11-20 (Public Finance)
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- James Andreoni & Laura K. Gee, 2011. "Gun For Hire: Does Delegated Enforcement Crowd out Peer Punishment in Giving to Public Goods?," NBER Working Papers 17033, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
- Shakun D. Mago & Anya C. Savikhin & Roman M. Sheremeta, 2012. "Facing Your Opponents: Social identification and information feedback in contests," Working Papers 12-15, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
- Lambarraa, Fatima & Riener, Gerhard, 2012.
"On the Norms of Charitable Giving in Islam: A Field Experiment,"
2012 Conference, August 18-24, 2012, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil
126795, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
- Fatima Lambarraa & Gerhard Riener, 2012. "On the Norms of Charitable Giving in Islam: A Field Experiment," Courant Research Centre: Poverty, Equity and Growth - Discussion Papers 111, Courant Research Centre PEG.
- Lambarraa, Fatima & Riener, Gerhard, 2012. "On the norms of charitable giving in Islam: A field experiment," DICE Discussion Papers 59, Heinrich‐Heine‐Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
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