IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/jaerec/doi10.1086-718280.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crowdfunding Conservation (and Other Public Goods)

Author

Listed:
  • Erik Ansink
  • Mark Koetse
  • Jetske Bouma
  • Dominic Hauck
  • Daan van Soest

Abstract

Crowdfunding has become an increasingly popular means to fund the provision of public goods and especially of nature conservation projects. We implement a lab-in-the-field experiment by setting up a web-based user interface, very similar to actual crowdfunding platforms, to test whether coordination mechanisms, like seed money and decoy projects, can increase the effectiveness of crowdfunding campaigns if multiple public goods projects are eligible for funding. We find some of our treatments to affect coordination especially via early contributions, but not always in an intuitive way. Our results are confirmed in a follow-up experiment with actual nature conservation projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik Ansink & Mark Koetse & Jetske Bouma & Dominic Hauck & Daan van Soest, 2022. "Crowdfunding Conservation (and Other Public Goods)," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 9(3), pages 565-602.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/718280
    DOI: 10.1086/718280
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/718280
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/718280
    Download Restriction: Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/718280?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Bagnoli & Barton L. Lipman, 1989. "Provision of Public Goods: Fully Implementing the Core through Private Contributions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(4), pages 583-601.
    2. Dorsey, Robert E, 1992. "The Voluntary Contributions Mechanism with Real Time Revisions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 73(3), pages 261-282, April.
    3. Blackwell, Calvin & McKee, Michael, 2003. "Only for my own neighborhood?: Preferences and voluntary provision of local and global public goods," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 115-131, September.
    4. Mollick, Ethan, 2014. "The dynamics of crowdfunding: An exploratory study," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 1-16.
    5. Xavier Gabaix, 2014. "A Sparsity-Based Model of Bounded Rationality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 129(4), pages 1661-1710.
    6. Mehta, Judith & Starmer, Chris & Sugden, Robert, 1994. "The Nature of Salience: An Experimental Investigation of Pure Coordination Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(3), pages 658-673, June.
    7. Spencer, Michael A. & Swallow, Stephen K. & Shogren, Jason F. & List, John A., 2009. "Rebate rules in threshold public good provision," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 798-806, June.
    8. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    9. Paolo Crosetto & Tobias Regner, 2014. "Crowdfunding: Determinants of success and funding dynamics," Jena Economics Research Papers 2014-035, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    10. Hudik, Marek & Chovanculiak, Robert, 2018. "Private provision of public goods via crowdfunding §," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(1), pages 23-44, February.
    11. Belleflamme, Paul & Omrani, Nessrine & Peitz, Martin, 2015. "The economics of crowdfunding platforms," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 11-28.
    12. Bagnoli, Mark & Ben-David, Shaul & McKee, Michael, 1992. "Voluntary provision of public goods : The multiple unit case," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(1), pages 85-106, February.
    13. Gabriel D. Carroll & James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian & Andrew Metrick, 2009. "Optimal Defaults and Active Decisions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1639-1674.
    14. Cadsby, Charles Bram & Maynes, Elizabeth, 1999. "Voluntary provision of threshold public goods with continuous contributions: experimental evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 53-73, January.
    15. Tabarrok, Alexander, 1998. "The Private Provision of Public Goods via Dominant Assurance Contracts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 96(3-4), pages 345-362, September.
    16. Marks, Melanie & Croson, Rachel, 1998. "Alternative rebate rules in the provision of a threshold public good: An experimental investigation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 195-220, February.
    17. Ananish Chaudhuri, 2011. "Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(1), pages 47-83, March.
    18. Daniel Rondeau & John List, 2008. "Matching and challenge gifts to charity: evidence from laboratory and natural field experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 11(3), pages 253-267, September.
    19. R. Isaac & David Schmidtz & James Walker, 1989. "The assurance problem in a laboratory market," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 62(3), pages 217-236, September.
    20. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1984. "Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 171-193, July.
    21. Duffy, John & Ochs, Jack & Vesterlund, Lise, 2007. "Giving little by little: Dynamic voluntary contribution games," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(9), pages 1708-1730, September.
    22. Alekseev, Aleksandr & Charness, Gary & Gneezy, Uri, 2017. "Experimental methods: When and why contextual instructions are important," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 48-59.
    23. John A. List & David Lucking-Reiley, 2002. "The Effects of Seed Money and Refunds on Charitable Giving: Experimental Evidence from a University Capital Campaign," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 215-233, February.
    24. Rachel Croson & Melanie Marks, 2000. "Step Returns in Threshold Public Goods: A Meta- and Experimental Analysis," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(3), pages 239-259, March.
    25. Corazzini, Luca & Cotton, Christopher & Valbonesi, Paola, 2015. "Donor coordination in project funding: Evidence from a threshold public goods experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 16-29.
    26. Maria Bigoni & Marco Casari & Andrzej Skrzypacz & Giancarlo Spagnolo, 2015. "Time Horizon and Cooperation in Continuous Time," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 587-616, March.
    27. Roland Strausz, 2017. "A Theory of Crowdfunding: A Mechanism Design Approach with Demand Uncertainty and Moral Hazard," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(6), pages 1430-1476, June.
    28. Joseph Henrich & Steve J. Heine & Ara Norenzayan, 2010. "The Weirdest People in the World?," RatSWD Working Papers 139, German Data Forum (RatSWD).
    29. van de Kragt, Alphons J. C. & Orbell, John M. & Dawes, Robyn M., 1983. "The Minimal Contributing Set as a Solution to Public Goods Problems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 112-122, March.
    30. Zubrickas, Robertas, 2014. "The provision point mechanism with refund bonuses," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 231-234.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Chowdhury Mohammad Sakib Anwar & Konstantinos Georgalos, 2023. "Position Uncertainty in a Sequential Public Goods Game: An Experiment," Papers 2308.00179, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Erik Ansink & Mark Koetse & Jetske Bouma & Dominic Hauck & Daan van Soest, 2017. "Crowdfunding public goods: An experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 17-119/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    2. Zhi Li & Dongsheng Chen & Pengfei Liu, 2023. "Assurance payments on the coordination of threshold public goods provision: An experimental investigation," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 25(2), pages 407-436, April.
    3. Cason, Timothy N. & Zubrickas, Robertas, 2019. "Donation-based crowdfunding with refund bonuses," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 452-471.
    4. Federica Alberti & Anna Cartwright & Edward Cartwright, 2021. "Predicting Efficiency in Threshold Public Good Games: A Learning Direction Theory Approach," Working Papers in Economics & Finance 2021-01, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth Business School, Economics and Finance Subject Group.
    5. Luca Corazzini & Christopher Cotton & Paola Valbonesi, 2013. "Too many charities? Insight from an experiment with multiple public goods and contribution thresholds," Working Papers 2013-13, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    6. Corazzini, Luca & Cotton, Christopher & Valbonesi, Paola, 2015. "Donor coordination in project funding: Evidence from a threshold public goods experiment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 16-29.
    7. Cason, Timothy N. & Tabarrok, Alex & Zubrickas, Robertas, 2021. "Early refund bonuses increase successful crowdfunding," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 78-95.
    8. Bose, Bijetri & Rabotyagov, Sergey, 2018. "Provision of public goods using a combination of lottery and a provision point," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 99-115.
    9. Matthew Donazzan & Nisvan Erkal & Boon Han Koh, 2016. "Impact of Rebates and Refunds on Contributions to Threshold Public Goods: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 83(1), pages 69-86, July.
    10. Maoliang Ye & Jie Zheng & Plamen Nikolov & Sam Asher, 2020. "One Step at a Time: Does Gradualism Build Coordination?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 113-129, January.
    11. Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Pham Khanh, Nam, 2011. "Funding a New Bridge in Rural Vietnam: A field experiment on conditional cooperation and default contributions," Working Papers in Economics 503, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    12. Julian Rauchdobler & Rupert Sausgruber & Jean-Robert Tyran, 2010. "Voting on Thresholds for Public Goods: Experimental Evidence," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 66(1), pages 34-64, March.
    13. Robertas Zubrickas, 2013. "The provision point mechanism with reward money," ECON - Working Papers 114, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Oct 2013.
    14. Zhi Li & Pengfei Liu & Stephen K. Swallow, 2021. "Assurance Contracts to Support Multi-Unit Threshold Public Goods in Environmental Markets," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 80(2), pages 339-378, October.
    15. Rose, Steven K. & Clark, Jeremy & Poe, Gregory L. & Rondeau, Daniel & Schulze, William D., 2002. "The private provision of public goods: tests of a provision point mechanism for funding green power programs," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 131-155, February.
    16. Federica Alberti & Edward J. Cartwright, 2016. "Full agreement and the provision of threshold public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 166(1), pages 205-233, January.
    17. Felix Koelle, 2012. "Heterogeneity and Cooperation in Privileged Groups: The Role of Capability and Valuation on Public Goods Provision," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-08, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    18. Ellman, Matthew & Hurkens, Sjaak, 2019. "Optimal crowdfunding design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    19. Angela C M de Oliveira & John M Spraggon & Matthew J Denny, 2016. "Instrumenting Beliefs in Threshold Public Goods," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(2), pages 1-15, February.
    20. Li, Zhi & Liu, Pengfei & Swallow, Stephen K., 2017. "Supporting Private Provision of Ecosystem Services through Contracts: Evidence from Lab and Field Experiments," 2018 Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting, January 5-7, 2018, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 266300, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    More about this item

    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:ucp:jaerec:doi:10.1086/718280. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Journals Division (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JAERE .

    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.