Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-bt4hw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T06:31:24.179Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Doing good or doing harm: experimental evidence on giving and taking in public good games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Menusch Khadjavi  and
Andreas Lange
Menusch Khadjavi*
Affiliation:
University of Kiel and Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Kiel, Germany
Andreas Lange*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Hamburg, Von Melle Park 5, 20146 Hamburg, Germany
*
menusch.khadjavi@ifw-kiel.de
andreas.lange@wiso.uni-hamburg.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We replicate Andreoni (Quarterly Journal of Economics 110: 1–21, 1995)’s finding that agents behave more selfishly when taking from a public account than when giving to a public good. Based on a neutral language setting we add new insights into motivations to give or take in a linear public good setting: we find that Andreoni’s result is partly driven by the complete elimination of giving options in the taking frame. However, a pure extension of the action space into the taking domain also leads to a significant increase in selfish behavior.

Keywords

Public goodVoluntary provisionTakingExperiments

JEL classification

H41: Public Goods C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 2015 , pp. 432 - 441
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/s10683-014-9411-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

We thank participants of the 2011 ESA European Conference in Luxembourg, 2011 EAERE Annual Conference in Rome, the 2011 Florence Workshop on Behavioral and Experimental Economics, and seminar participants at several universities for helpful comments.

References

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 (1995). Warm-glow versus cold-prickle: the effects of positive and negative framing on cooperation in experiments. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110, 1–21. 10.2307/2118508CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bardsley, N (2008). Dictator game giving: altruism or artifact?. Experimental Economics, 11, 122–133. 10.1007/s10683-007-9172-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cookson, R (2000). Framing effects in public good experiments. Experimental Economics, 3, 55–79. 10.1023/A:1009994008166CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, JC, Ostrom, E, Sadiraj, V, & Walker, JM (2013). Provision versus appropriation in symmetric and asymmetric social dilemmas. Southern Economic Journal, 79, 496–512. 10.4284/0038-4038-2012.186CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, JC, & Sadiraj, V (2007). On modeling voluntary contributions to public goods. Public Finance Review, 35, 311–332. 10.1177/1091142106295756CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cubitt, RP, Drouvelis, M, & Gächter, S (2011). Framing and free riding: emotional responses and punishment in social dilemma games. Experimental Economics, 14, 254–272. 10.1007/s10683-010-9266-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dufwenberg, M, Gächter, S, & Hennig-Schmidt, H (2011). The framing of games and the psychology of play. Games and Economic Behavior, 73, 459–478. 10.1016/j.geb.2011.02.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fagerland, MW, & Sandvik, L (2009). Performance of five two-sample location tests for skewed distributions with unequal variances. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 30, 490–496. 10.1016/j.cct.2009.06.007CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fehr, E, & Gächter, 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, & Schmidt, K (1999). A theory of fairness, competition, and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 817–868. 10.1162/003355399556151CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischbacher, U (2007). Z-Tree: zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 10, 171–178. 10.1007/s10683-006-9159-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greiner, B. (2004). An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments, in: Kremer, K. and V. Macho (eds.), Forschung und wissenschaftliches Rechnen 2003. GWDG Bericht 63, Göttingen: Ges. für Wiss. Datenverarbeitung, pp. 79–93.Google Scholar
Kotchen, MJ (2009). Voluntary provision of public goods for bads: a theory of environmental offsets. Economic Journal, 119, 883–899. 10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02215.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, JA (2007). On the interpretation of giving in dictator games. Journal of Political Economy, 115, 482–493. 10.1086/519249CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Park, E-S (2000). Warm-glow versus cold-prickle: a further experimental study of framing effects on free-riding. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 43, 405–421. 10.1016/S0167-2681(00)00128-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruxton, GD (2006). The unequal variance t-test is an underused alternative to Student’s t-test and the Mann-Whitney U test. Behavioral Ecology, 17, 688–690. 10.1093/beheco/ark016CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sonnemans, J, Schram, A, & Offerman, T (1998). Public good provision and public bad prevention: the effect of framing. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 34, 143–161. 10.1016/S0167-2681(97)00042-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Khadjavi and Lange supplementary material

Appendix – Experimental Instructions
Download Khadjavi and Lange supplementary material(File)
File 67.5 KB