Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments

One lingering puzzle is why voluntary contributions to public goods decline over time in experimental and real-world settings. We show that the decline of cooperation is driven by individual preferences for imperfect conditional cooperation. Many people's desire to contribute less than others,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inThe American economic review Vol. 100; no. 1; pp. 541 - 556
Main Authors Fischbacher, Urs, Gächter, Simon
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Nashville American Economic Association 01.03.2010
Subjects
Beliefs
Cooperation
Economic analysis
Economic models
Economics
Experimental economics
Experiments
Free rider effect
Free riding
Game theory
Linear regression
Modeling
Preferences
Public good
Public goods
Regression coefficients
Shorter Papers
Simulations
Social behaviour
Studies
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:One lingering puzzle is why voluntary contributions to public goods decline over time in experimental and real-world settings. We show that the decline of cooperation is driven by individual preferences for imperfect conditional cooperation. Many people's desire to contribute less than others, rather than changing beliefs of what others will contribute over time or people's heterogeneity in preferences makes voluntary cooperation fragile. Universal free riding thus eventually emerges, despite the fact that most people are not selfish. (D12, D 83, H41, Z13)
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-1
content type line 23
ISSN:0002-8282
1944-7981
DOI:10.1257/aer.100.1.541