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In many cases individuals benefit differently from the provision of a public good. We study in a laboratory experiment how heterogeneity in returns and uncertainty affects unconditional and conditional contribution behavior in a linear public goods game. The elicitation of conditional contributions in combination with a within subject design allows...
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It has become well-accepted that women are more risk averse than men. This research investigates when gender differences in risk aversion are likely to occur and when they are less likely to manifest. We find that gender differences in risk aversion are likely to occur in decisions under risk, where the probability of outcomes is known and objectiv...
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... In the context of the public goods game, the real-world production of public goods may depend on a partially known function (similar to estimating the income of a newly produced movie): this number could be estimated, but not known beforehand. The effect of uncertainty with respect to the payoffs in the public goods game has been studied extensively in the literature [5,19,22,39]; different works show that, when players are uncertain about the payoff, their contributions to the public good significantly decrease. ...
... In particular, Fig. 17 shows the average cooperation probability for the twoagent scenarios with one uncertain agent and r ¼ 2, while Fig. 18 shows the results for the scenario with two uncertain agents with r ¼ 0:5 (Fig. 12). 22,23) and for the cases with three uncertain agents, with uncertainty r ¼ 1 (Figs. 24, 25). ...
Communication is a widely used mechanism to promote cooperation in multi-agent systems. In the field of emergent communication, agents are typically trained in specific environments: cooperative, competitive or mixed-motive. Motivated by the idea that real-world settings are characterized by incomplete information and that humans face daily interactions under a wide spectrum of incentives, we aim to explore the role of emergent communication when simultaneously exploited across all these contexts. In this work, we pursue this line of research by focusing on social dilemmas. To do this, we developed an extended version of the Public Goods Game, which allows us to train independent reinforcement learning agents simultaneously in different scenarios where incentives are (mis)aligned to various extents. Additionally, agents experience uncertainty in terms of the alignment of their incentives with those of others. We equip agents with the ability to learn a communication policy and study the impact of emergent communication in the face of uncertainty among agents. Our findings show that in settings where all agents have the same level of uncertainty, communication can enhance the cooperation of the whole group. However, in cases of asymmetric uncertainty, the agents that do not face uncertainty learn to use communication to deceive and exploit their uncertain peers.
... Past studies have typically found that risk or uncertainty has a weakly negative impact on overall contributions. Similar results occur in experiments that incorporate risk or uncertainty in other social dilemma games, including prisoner's dilemma, stag-hunt, coordination, trust, and common resource pool games (Dickinson, 1998;Killingback et al., 1999;Gangadharan and Nemes, 2009;Levati et al., 2009;Levati and Morone, 2013;Fischbacher et al., 2014;Bjork et al., 2016;Stoddard, 2013;Stoddard et al., 2015;Aksoy and Krasteva, 2020;Bejarano et al., 2021;Vesely et al., 2017;Krawczyk and Le Lec, 2016;Butera et al., 2020). ...
... In such scenarios, the individuals who contribute nothing will dominate the whole population (Hauert et al., 2006). Encouragingly, some research on variants of PGG has yielded numerous significant advancements and identified numerous crucial factors that promote cooperation(manifested as individuals increasing their contributions), including but not limited to voluntary punishment (Fehr & Gächter, 2000;Lv & Song, 2022;Masclet et al., 2003;Santos et al., 2010), proper competition (Bergantino et al., 2023;Li et al., 2023), enhancing marginal per capita return (Fischbacher et al., 2014), social and group diversity (Santos et al., 2008;Shi et al., 2010;Yu et al., 2022), added rewards (Szolnoki & Perc, 2010;Wang et al., 2021), prior commitments (Han et al., 2017), tolerant strategy (Szolnoki & Chen, 2015) and heterogenous resource (Kun & Dieckmann, 2013). There is much more literature on PGG and can be broadly categorized into two waves of conclusions. ...
This study aims to reveal the nature and motivation of human cooperation. By adopting the public goods game paradigm of competition and repetition, and introducing factors such as punishment and heterogeneous contributions, an experiment was conducted at Nanjing University in China, where 224 undergraduate students participated in seven games, including intragroup and intergroup competition. Meanwhile, participants’ social value orientation (SVO) was measured. The results indicated that cooperation (non-zero contribution) was the common choice for participants, but their contributions varied across rounds and games. Individuals generally act as conditional free-riders in intragroup competition games, i.e., they use the “small for big” strategy. In contrast, individuals generally act as conditional cooperators in intergroup competitive games, i.e., they use the “tit for tat” strategy. Although SVO should theoretically be related to contribution, analysis revealed that participants’ contributions were not significantly dominated by SVO, but were primarily driven by self-interest. Specifically, individuals switch back and forth between conditional cooperators and conditional free-riders to seek maximum self-interest. Our results not only reveal the complexity and strategic nature of human behavior in competitive contexts but also highlight the central role of self-interest in driving individual decision-making, reflecting the balance between individuals’ pursuit of self-interest and adaptation to the environment in social interactions.
... The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. 10 Much of the previous literature on heterogeneous returns has examined the effects of risky or uncertain returns (see, e.g., Levati and Morone, 2013;Fischbacher et al., 2014). In such experiments, returns are both heterogeneous and unknown before provision, as in our setting. ...
The present research aimed at investigating changes in contributions made within a public goods game (PGG) across varying conditions: a standard PGG, a PGG involving risky returns, and a PGG involving competition for heterogeneous returns. The empirical results, collected through a one-shot laboratory experiment, informed the classification of subject types and facilitated the calibration of an agent-based model (ABM). This model, populated by heterogeneous agents differentiated by social preferences, served two primary purposes: first, to analyze changes in contributions made under the specified conditions; and second, to evaluate the effect of varying proportions of unconditional cooperators. To achieve these aims, we compared contributions made under different incentive schemes and varying compositions of unconditional cooperators and free riders. The analysis enabled us to assess whether cooperation was better sustained by enhancing incentives or fostering prosocial preferences. Notably, the findings suggest that, while the most effective strategy for sustaining contributions is a monetary incentive involving competition for the highest return, a comparable outcome can be achieved by shaping individual preferences. The results point to the multifaceted nature of human cooperation and the potential for non-monetary incentives to shape cooperative behavior.
... There is no clear picture that emerges from that literature. Some experiments have focused on introducing uncertainty about the marginal per capita return (see e.g., Fisher et al., 1995;Levati et al., 2009;Fischbacher et al., 2014;Bjök et al., 2016;Boulu-Reshef et al., 2017;Théroude and Zylbersztejn, 2020), while others have looked at the effect of introducing uncertainty about actually receiving the benefits from the public good (see e.g., Dickinson, 1998;Gangadharan and Nemes, 2009;Levati and Morone, 2013). Fisher et al. (1995), Bjök et al. (2016, Boulu-Reshef et al. (2017), and Théroude and Zylbersztejn (2020) find no effect of uncertainty on the level of contributions. ...
... /frbhe. . et al. (2009), and Fischbacher et al. (2014 show evidence of a negative effect on cooperation. Levati and Morone (2013) state that this negative impact is due to the payoff parameterization. ...
Introduction
Ambiguity is part of most of the daily life decisions. It can affect the way people deal with environmental threats, especially when they face a social dilemma.
Method
We run an experiment where every group of four subjects is exposed to a risk that may result in a loss for each member. Subjects must decide on the allocation of their resources between mitigation strategies that allow them to decrease the probability of a disaster occurring for the group, and adaptation strategies that allow them to reduce the magnitude of that disaster for themselves only. In a first treatment (called R isk), subjects perfectly know the probability of occurrence of the event. We introduce ambiguity with regard to that probability in a second treatment (called Amb iguity), and in a third treatment (called I nformation A cquisition), subjects have the possibility to pay to obtain information allowing them to eliminate ambiguity.
Results and discussion
The results show that the introduction of ambiguity has no impact on average contributions compared to the R isk treatment. However, individual decisions to mitigate or to adapt are affected by subjects' attitude toward risk and ambiguity. In more than half of the cases, subjects are willing to pay to obtain information, which argues in favor of greater dissemination of information.
... To the best of our knowledge, these are the only studies on cooperation that specifically investigate the interplay between equality and equity. Other studies have explored the impact of heterogeneity in cooperation games (e.g.,Noussair and Tan, 2011;Reuben and Riedl, 2013;Fischbacher et al., 2014). However, there exists no tension between equity and equality in these studies, as individual choices do not affect the allocation of returns. ...
... After completing the conditional contributions, participants were asked to make a oneshot unconditional contribution decision. The order of decisions in our experiment was not counterbalanced because we wanted to first classify the participants based on their behavior in the conditional decisions and then examine whether the behavior in the conditional game predicted their behavior in the unconditional game (21,59,60). ...
Some scholars find that behavioral variation in the public goods game is explained by variations in participants’ understanding of how to maximize payoff and that confusion leads to cooperation. Their findings lead them to question the common assumption in behavioral economics experiments that choices reflect motivations. We conduct two experiments, in which we minimize confusion by providing participants with increased training. We also introduce a question that specifically assesses participants’ understanding of payoff maximization choices. Our experimental results show that the distribution of behavior types is significantly different when participants play with computers versus humans. A significant increase in contributions is also observed when participants play with humans compared to when they play with computers. Moreover, social norms may be the main motive for contributions when playing with computers. Our findings suggest that social preferences, rather than confusion, play a crucial role in determining contributions in public goods games when playing with humans. We therefore argue that the assumption in behavioral economics experiments that choices reveal motivations is indeed valid.
... Other related studies, such as the ones by Fisher et al. (1995) and Fischbacher et al. (2014), do not have the location choice element but incorporate a specific type of player heterogeneity, forming the strand of literature on so-called privileged groups. However, there is a major distinction in the nature of type differencesusing the terminology from Kölle (2015), in our paper players have "heterogeneous capabilities" (impact sizes), as opposed to "heterogeneous valuations" in a form of different marginal per-capita return (MPCR) values. ...
We investigate a dynamic development process which involves heterogeneous agents making location choices. In our spatial model agents differ from each other by the impact they have on the development dynamics. In equilibrium, a high impact agent, the pioneer, sacrifices some short-run benefits and chooses an underdeveloped location. The pioneer improves that location and creates incentives for other agents to choose it later in the game. We design a laboratory experiment to test various comparative statics of the model and analyze the role of pioneers as well as the effect that early investments in public goods have on long-run outcomes. Our findings are consistent with theoretical predictions — high impact subjects tend to choose pioneering more frequently than other agents. As predicted, improvements in initial conditions through early investments in public goods significantly affect the dynamics of the system and can lead to substantial welfare improvements. Moreover, learning and experimentation play a significant role in our experiments and help subjects’ behavior to match point predictions of the model. We also observe behavioral deviations such as when some low impact subjects consistently act as lesser pioneers and also choose the underdeveloped location. Such behavior can be treated as growing cooperation and linked to Pareto improvement concerns over the outcomes of previous games.
... If group members have other-regarding or pro-social concerns, they have to coordinate on cooperating, respectively on the level of cooperation; heterogeneity makes coordination more difficult. Existing studies finding negative effects of heterogeneity or null effects have, for instance, looked at heterogeneity in endowments (Buckley and Croson 2006;Chan et al. 1999;Charness et al. 2014;Cherry et al. 2005;Ostrom et al. 1994;Reuben and Riedl 2013), heterogeneity in benefits through different returns from the public good (Fischbacher et al. 2014;Fisher et al. 1994;Kube et al. 2015;Reuben and Riedl 2013), heterogeneity in the source of endowment (earned endowment versus allocated endowment; Oxoby and Spraggon 2013), and heterogeneity from other observable characteristics such as religion, ethnic affiliation, nationality, or other identities (e.g., Chen et al. 2014;Habyarimana et al. 2007). ...
Social dilemmas such as greenhouse gas emission reduction are often characterized by heterogeneity in benefits from solving the dilemma. How should leadership of group members be organized in such a setting? We implement a laboratory public goods experiment with heterogeneous marginal per capita returns from the public good and leading by example that is either implemented exogenously or by self-selection. Our results suggest that both ways of implementing leadership only have small effects on contributions to the public good. Self-selected leaders—in particular self-selected low-benefit leaders—tend to set better examples than imposed leaders, but they are also exploited more strongly by followers. Leaders seem to need additional instruments to be more effective when benefits are heterogeneous.
... The same pattern exists when the stochastic returns are heterogeneous among the participants (Théroude and Zylbersztejn, 2020;Colasante et al., 2020), or when the participants receive different signals about the risky MPCR (Butera and List, 2017). Fischbacher et al. (2014) find that, when returns are heterogenous, uncertainty about the own MPCR significantly lowers average conditional contributions. A different approach considers a public good with a known MPCR, but this is provided only with a certain probability p < 1, independent of the aggregate contributions. ...
Can strategic information acquisition harm the provision of a public good? We investigate this question in an incentivized online experiment with a large sample of the German population. The marginal returns of the public good are uncertain: it is either socially efficient to contribute or not. In the information treatment, participants can choose between two information sources with opposite biases. One source is more likely to report low marginal returns, whereas the other is more likely to report high marginal returns. We find that information avoidance is a minor phenomenon. Most participants select the source biased towards reporting low marginal returns, independent of their prior beliefs. As a result, the information treatment reduces contributions and increases free-riding. When contributing is socially efficient, the information treatment reduces social welfare. We find that social preferences guide information acquisition: socially-oriented participants are more likely to acquire information and select the source that is biased towards reporting low marginal returns.
JEL Classification: C99, D12, D61, D83, H41