The Network for Integrated Behavioural Science  
University of Nottingham
  
Two new Working Papers which acknowledge NIBS1 support have been published by CeDEx at the University of Nottingham.

  • Preferences and Perceptions in Provision and Maintenance Public Goods by Simon Gächter, Felix Kölle and Simone Quercia 

    We study two generic versions of public goods problems: in Provision problems, the public good does not exist initially and needs to be provided; in Maintenance problems, the public good already exists and needs to be maintained. In five lab and online experiments (n=2,584), we document a robust asymmetry in preferences and perceptions in two incentive-equivalent versions of these public good problems. We find fewer conditional cooperators and more free riders in Maintenance than Provision, a difference that is replicable, stable, and reflected in perceptions of kindness. Incentivized control questions administered before gameplay reveal dilemma-specific misperceptions but controlling for them neither eliminates game-dependent conditional  cooperation, nor differences in perceived kindness of others’ cooperation. Thus, even when sharing the same game form, Maintenance and Provision are different social dilemmas that require separate behavioral analyses. Despite some inconsistencies, a theory of revealed altruism comes closest to explaining our results.
  • The Variability of Conditional Cooperation in Sequential Prisoner’s Dilemmas by Simon Gächter, Kyeongtae Lee, and Martin Sefton 

    We examine how conditional cooperation is related to the material payoffs in a Sequential Prisoner’s Dilemma experiment. We have subjects play eight SPDs with varying payoffs, systematically varying the material gain to the second-mover and the material loss to the first-mover when the second-mover defects in response to cooperation. We find that few second-movers are conditionally cooperative in all eight games, and most second-movers change their strategies from game to game. Second-movers are less likely to conditionally cooperate when the gain is higher and when the loss is lower. This pattern is consistent with models of distributional preferences. 
Posted on Wednesday 4th May 2022

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