Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-kp629 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T00:13:25.910Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Recognizing contributors: an experiment on public goods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Anya Savikhin Samek  and
Roman M. Sheremeta
Anya Savikhin Samek*
Affiliation:
School of Human Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1300 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA
Roman M. Sheremeta
Affiliation:
Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 11119 Bellflower Road, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, 1 University Drive, Orange, CA 92866, USA
*
asamak@wisc.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the impact of recognizing contributors on public good contributions. We vary recognizing all, highest or lowest contributors. Consistent with previous studies, recognizing all contributors significantly increases contributions relative to the baseline. Recognizing only the highest contributors does not increase contributions compared to not recognizing contributors, while recognizing only the lowest contributors is as effective as recognizing all contributors. These findings support our conjecture that aversion from shame is a more powerful motivator for giving than anticipation of prestige.

Keywords

Public-goodsInformationExperiments

JEL classification

H41: Public Goods C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C72: Noncooperative Games

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 673 - 690
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-013-9389-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

References

Andreoni, J. (1989). Giving with impure altruism: applications to charity and ricardian equivalence. Journal of Political Economy, 97, 1447–1458. 10.1086/261662CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreoni, J. (1990). Impure altruism and donations to public goods: a theory of warm-glow giving. The Economic Journal, 100, 464–477. 10.2307/2234133CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreoni, J., & Bernheim, D. (2009). Social image and the 50–50 norm: a theoretical and experimental analysis of audience effects. Econometrica, 77, 1607–1636. 10.3982/ECTA7384Google Scholar
Andreoni, J., & Petrie, R. (2004). Public goods experiments without confidentiality: a glimpse into fund-raising. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1605–1623. 10.1016/S0047-2727(03)00040-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariely, D., Bracha, A., & Meier, S. (2009). Doing good or doing well? Image motivation and monetary incentives in behaving prosocially. The American Economic Review, 99, 544–555. 10.1257/aer.99.1.544CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumeister, R. F., Stillwell, A. M., & Heatherton, T. F. (1994). Guilt: an interpersonal approach. Psychological Bulletin, 115, 243–267. 10.1037/0033-2909.115.2.243CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Benabou, R., & Tirole, J. (2006). Incentives and prosocial behavior. The American Economic Review, 99, 544–555.Google Scholar
Chen, Y., Harper, F. M., Konstan, J., & Li, S. X. (2010). Social comparisons and contributions to online communities: a field experiment on MovieLens. The American Economic Review, 100, 1358–1398. 10.1257/aer.100.4.1358CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croson, R. T. A. (1996). Partners and strangers revisited. Economics Letters, 53, 25–32. 10.1016/S0165-1765(97)82136-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Hooge, I. E., Zeelenberg, M., & Breugelmans, S. M. (2007). Moral sentiments and cooperation: differential influences of shame and guilt. Cognition and Emotion, 21, 1025–1042. 10.1080/02699930600980874CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dufwenberg, M., & Muren, A. (2006). Generosity, anonymity, gender. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 61, 42–49. 10.1016/j.jebo.2004.11.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Gaechter, S. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. The American Economic Review, 90, 980–994. 10.1257/aer.90.4.980CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Gaechter, S. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature, 415, 137–140. 10.1038/415137aCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. M. (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. The quarterly journal of economics, 114(3), 817–868. 10.1162/003355399556151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fehr, E., & Schmidt, K. M. (2007). Adding a stick to the carrot? The interaction of bonuses and fines. The American Economic Review, 97(2), 177–181. 10.1257/aer.97.2.177CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Filiz-Ozbay, E., & Ozbay, E. (2013). Effect of an audience in public goods provision. Experimental Economics.Google Scholar
Fischbacher, U. (2007). z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 10(2), 171–178. 10.1007/s10683-006-9159-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, U., & Gachter, S. (2010). Social preferences, beliefs, and the dynamics of free riding in public good experiments. The American Economic Review, 100, 541–556. 10.1257/aer.100.1.541CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, U., Gächter, S., & Fehr, E. (2001). Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters, 71(3), 397–404. 10.1016/S0165-1765(01)00394-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, R. H. (1988). Passions within reason: the strategic role of the emotions, New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., & Larimer, C. W. (2008). Social pressure and voter turnout: evidence from a large-scale field experiment. American Political Science Review, 102, 33–48. 10.1017/S000305540808009XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, A. S., Green, D. P., & Larimer, C. W. (2010). An experiment testing the relative effectiveness of encouraging voter participation by inducing feelings of pride or shame. Political Behavior, 32, 409–422. 10.1007/s11109-010-9110-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, P. Gilbert, P., & Andrews, B. (1998). What is shame? Some core issues and controversies. Shame: interpersonal behaviour, psychopathology and culture, New York: Oxford University Press 3–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glazer, A., & Konrad, K. (1996). A signaling explanation for charity. The American Economic Review, 86, 1019–1028.Google Scholar
Groves, T., & Ledyard, J. (1977). Optimal allocation of public goods: a solution to the free rider problem. Econometrica, 45, 783–809. 10.2307/1912672CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harbaugh, W. (1998). The prestige motive for making charitable transfers. The American Economic Review, 88, 277–282.Google Scholar
Harper, F. M., Li, S. X., Chen, Y., & Konstan, J. A. (2007). Social comparisons to motivate contributions to an online community, 148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hollander, H. (1990). A social exchange approach to voluntary cooperation. American Economic Review, 80, 1157–1167.Google Scholar
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291. 10.2307/1914185CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keltner, D., & Buswell, B. N. (1996). Evidence for the distinctness of embarrassment, shame, and guilt: a study of recalled antecedents and facial expressions of emotion. Cognition and Emotion, 10, 155–172. 10.1080/026999396380312CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ketelaar, T. Crawford, C., & Salmon, C. (2004). Ancestral emotions, current decisions: using evolutionary game theory to explore the role of emotions in decision-making. Darwinism, public policy and private decisions, Mahwah: Erlbaum 145–168.Google Scholar
Ketelaar, T., & Au, W. T. (2003). The effects of guilt on the behaviour of uncooperative individuals in repeated social bargaining games: an affect-as-information interpretation of the role of emotion in social interaction. Cognition and Emotion, 17, 429–453. 10.1080/02699930143000662CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lacetera, N., & Macis, M. (2010). Social image concerns and prosocial behavior: field evidence from a nonlinear incentive scheme. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 76, 225–237. 10.1016/j.jebo.2010.08.007CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landry, C. E., Lange, A., List, J. A., Price, M. K., & Rupp, N. G. (2006). Toward an understanding of the economics of charity: evidence from a field experiment. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121, 747–782. 10.1162/qjec.2006.121.2.747CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ledyard, J. Kagel, J., & Roth, A. E. (1995). Public goods: a survey of experimental research. Handbook of experimental economics, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lewis, H. B. (1971). Shame and guilt in neurosis. Psychoanalytic Review, 58, 419–438.Google ScholarPubMed
Li, J., & Riyanto, Y. E. (2009). Category reporting in charitable giving: an experimental analysis. Working paper.Google Scholar
Ludford, P. J., Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., & Terveen, L. (2004). Think different: increasing online community participation using uniqueness and group dissimilarity. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on human factors in computing systems, Vienna: ACM 631–638.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mago, S. D., Savikhin, A. C., & Sheremeta, R. M. (2012). Facing your opponents: social identification and information feedback in contests. ESI working paper.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masclet, D., Noussair, C., Tucker, S., & Villeval, M. (2003). Monetary and non-monetary punishment in the voluntary contributions mechanism. The American Economic Review, 93, 366–380. 10.1257/000282803321455359CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ostrom, E., Walker, J., & Gardner, R. (1992). Covenants with and without a sword: self-governance is possible. American Political Science Review, 86, 404–417. 10.2307/1964229CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Panagopoulos, C. (2010). Affect, social pressure and prosocial motivation: field experimental evidence of the mobilizing effects of pride, shame and publicizing voting behavior. Political Behavior, 32, 369–386. 10.1007/s11109-010-9114-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rabin, M. (1993). Incorporating fairness into game theory and economics. The American Economic Review, 83, 1281–1302.Google Scholar
Rafaeli, S., Ravid, G., & Soroka, V. (2004). De-lurking in virtual communities: a social communication network approach to measuring the effects of social and cultural capital. 37th Hawaii international conference on system sciences.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rana, O. F., & Hinze, A. (2004). Trust and reputation in dynamic scientific communities. IEEE Distributed Systems Online, 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rege, M. (2004). Social norms and private provision of public goods. Journal of Public Economic Theory, 6, 65–77. 10.1111/j.1467-9779.2004.00157.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rege, M., & Telle, K. (2004). The impact of social approval and framing on cooperation in public good situations. Journal of Public Economics, 88, 1625–1644. 10.1016/S0047-2727(03)00021-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sefton, M., Shupp, R., & Walker, J. (2007). The effect of rewards and sanctions in provision of public goods. Economic Inquiry, 45, 671–690. 10.1111/j.1465-7295.2007.00051.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soetevent, A. (2005). Anonymity in giving in a natural context—a field experiment in 30 churches. Journal of Public Economics, 89, 2301–2323. 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2004.11.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutter, M., Haigner, S., & Kocher, M. G. (2010). Choosing the carrot or the stick? Endogenous institutional choice in social dilemma situations. Review of Economic Studies, 77, 1540–1566. 10.1111/j.1467-937X.2010.00608.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tadelis, S. (2011). The power of shame and the rationality of trust. UC Berkeley, Working paper.Google Scholar
Tangney, J. P. E., & Fischer, K. W. (1995). Self-conscious emotions: the psychology of shame, guilt, embarrassment, and pride, New York: Guilford.Google Scholar
Yamagishi, T. (1986). The provision of a sanctioning system as a public good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 110–116. 10.1037/0022-3514.51.1.110CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, J., Adamic, L. A., & Ackerman, M. S. (2008). Crowdsourcing and knowledge sharing: strategic user behavior. EC’08, 246–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhang, X., & Zhu, F. (2011). Group size and incentives to contribute: a natural experiment at Chinese Wikipedia. The American Economic Review, 101, 1601–1615. 10.1257/aer.101.4.1601CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Savikhin Samek and Sheremeta supplementary material

Appendix
Download Savikhin Samek and Sheremeta supplementary material(File)
File 18.7 KB