We study the efficacy of rebate rules in reward-based crowdfunding, where a project is only realized when a funding goal is met, and only those who pledge at least a reservation price receive a reward from the project. We propose and experimentally test two rebate rules against the customary...

In this paper we disentangle the role of cooperative preferences and beliefs for explaining MPCR and group size effects in public goods games. To achieve this, we use the ABC approach, which explains cooperation as a function of cooperative attitudes and beliefs. We measure cooperative attitudes...

A key solution for public good provision is the voluntary formation of institutions that commit players to cooperate. Such institutions generate inequality if some players decide not to participate but cannot be excluded from cooperation benefits. Prior research with small groups emphasizes the...

Punishment institutions for curtailing free-riding in social dilemmas rely on information about individuals' behavior collected through monitoring. We contribute to the experimental study of cooperation-enhancing institutions by examining how cooperation and efficiency in a social dilemma change...

While inequality in resource endowments has been shown to affect cooperation levels in groups, much of this evidence comes from studies of within-group inequality. In an online public goods experiment, we instead examine the effects of payoff-irrelevant inequality in resources between groups on...

Many environmental problems represent social dilemma situations where individually rational behaviour leads to collectively suboptimal outcomes. Communication has been found to alleviate the dilemma and stimulate cooperation in these situations. Yet, the knowledge of the basic elements, i.e. the...

This article examines the nature of human behavior in a nested socialdilemma referred to as the Spillover Game. Players are divided into twogroups with positive production interdependencies. Based on theoreticallyderived opportunistic, local, and global optima, our experimental...

In this paper, we study a voluntary contribution mechanism withone-way communication. The relevance of one person’s words is assessedby assigning exogeniously the role of the ‘communicator’ to onegroup member. Contrary to the view that the mutual exchange ofpromises is necessary for the...

One-way communication has been found to substantially increasecontributions in linear voluntary contribution mechanisms. We confirmthe robustness of this result in the presence of income heterogeneity.

We investigate how burden sharing rules may impact the voluntary provision of a public good which generates heterogeneous benefits to agents. We compare different rule-based contribution schemes that are based on the principle of the smallest common denominator: all agents can suggest a minimum...