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More than words: the effects of cheap talk in a volunteer’s dilemma

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Christoph Feldhaus  and
Julia Stauf
Christoph Feldhaus*
Affiliation:
University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne, Germany
Julia Stauf
Affiliation:
University of Cologne, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, 50923 Cologne, Germany
*
feldhaus@wiso.uni-koeln.de
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Abstract

We theoretically and experimentally investigate a game in which exactly one person should make a costly effort to achieve a socially efficient outcome. This setting is commonly known as the volunteer’s dilemma. We implement one-way communication by allowing one player to send a message indicating whether she intends to volunteer and investigate the message’s effects on behavior and efficiency in the subsequent game. We theoretically demonstrate that there are asymmetric mixed-strategy equilibria in the volunteer’s dilemma and argue that one of these is likely to emerge through one-way communication. The experimental data support this notion. We find that the actions of both the sender and receiver of the message are crucially affected by the cheap talk stage and that efficiency in the volunteer’s dilemma increases with one-way communication.

Keywords

Volunteer’s dilemmaCheap talkCoordination

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C90: General C72: Noncooperative Games

Information

Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 342 - 359
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-015-9442-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Supplementary material: File

Feldhaus and Stauf supplementary material

Online Appendix 1: Instructions for the one-way communication treatment T2 (translation from German)
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