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COMPETITION AND COOPERATION IN A PUBLIC GOODS GAME: A FIELD EXPERIMENT
Author(s) -
Augenblick Ned,
Cunha Jesse M.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/ecin.12105
Subject(s) - competition (biology) , public good , economics , order (exchange) , microeconomics , public goods game , control (management) , field (mathematics) , politics , point (geometry) , public economics , law , political science , ecology , geometry , mathematics , management , finance , pure mathematics , biology
We explore the effects of competitive and cooperative motivations on contributions in a field experiment. A total of 10,000 potential political donors received solicitations referencing past contribution behavior of members of the competing party (competition treatment), the same party (cooperative treatment), or no past contribution information (control). We first theoretically analyze the effect of these treatments on the contribution behavior of agents with different social preferences in a modified intergroup public good (IPG) game. Then, we report the empirical results: Contribution rates in the competitive, cooperative, and control treatments were 1.45%, 1.08%, and 0.78%, respectively. With the exception of one large contribution, the distribution of contributions in the competitive treatment first order stochastically dominates that of the cooperative treatment. Qualitatively, it appears that the cooperative treatment induced more contributions around the common monetary reference point, while the competitive treatment led to more contributions at twice this amount. These results suggest that eliciting competitive rather than cooperative motivations can lead to higher contributions in IPG settings . ( JEL D72, H41, C93)