Studies show that identifying contributors significantly increases contributions to public goods. In practice, however, viewing identifiable information is costly, which may discourage people from accessing such information. To address this question, we design a public goods experiment in which...

We experimentally investigate the impact of visibility of contributors and cost of information on public good contributions. First, we vary recognizing all, highest or lowest contributors. Second, we investigate the effect of imposing a cost on viewing contributors. Recognizing all contributors...

We explain contributions in public goods games with the help of the reciprocity model of Dufwenberg and Kirchsteiger (2004) by applying some plausible modifications: Most importantly, we assume that subjects overestimate the kindness of their group members. In combination with the finding that...

Explaining the evolution and maintenance of cooperation among unrelated individuals is one of the fundamental problems in biology and the social sciences. Recent experimental evidence suggests that altruistic punishment is an important mechanism to maintain cooperation among humans. In this...

This paper studies the impact of ambiguity in the best shot and weakest link models of public good provision. The models are first analysed theoretically. Then we conduct experiments to study how ambiguity affects behaviour in these games. We test whether subjects' perception of ambiguity...

When members of one group encounter a norm violation committed by a member of another group, this antisocial behavior is often handled by picking a random member of the community to which the perpetrator belongs and by applying sanctions to him/her. Despite its prevalence, this kind of...

This study investigates the effects of unfair enforcement of institutional rules on public good contributions, personal and social norms, and trust. In a preregistered online experiment (n = 1,038), we find that biased institutions reduce rule compliance compared to fair institutions. However,...

We report the results of an experimental study that compares voting mechanisms in the provision of public goods. Subjects can freely decide how much they want to contribute. Whether the public good is finally provided is decided by a referendum under full information about all contributions. If...

We use an experiment to test the hypothesis that groups consisting of like-minded cooperators are able to cooperate irrespective of punishment and therefore have a lower demand for a costly punishment institution than groups of like-minded free riders, who are unable to cooperate without...

We provide a test of the role of social preferences and beliefs in voluntary cooperation and its decline. We elicit individuals' cooperation preferences in one experiment and use them - as well as subjects' elicited beliefs - to explain contributions to a public good played repeatedly. We find...