Communication and visibility in public goods provision

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Haruvy, Ernan; Li, Sherry Xin; McCabe, Kevin; Twieg, Peter
• 署名单位: University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas; George Mason University
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.08.002
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 276-296
• 关键词: Experiments; public goods; Voluntary contribution game; COMMUNICATION; Virtual worlds

摘要

We design a public goods laboratory experiment in both a virtual world environment and an abstract computerized environment, each with and without communication and visibility, to investigate how communication and visibility of other participants affect individual contributions to public goods. In both environments, the presence of communication significantly and consistently improves public good contributions. However, the interaction between communication and visibility differs in the two environments. While the two dimensions are substitutes in the abstract computerized environment, they work in a complementary way to increase public goods contributions in the virtual world environment. Chat content analysis further shows that positive reinforcement and monitoring have a positive impact on cooperation, but dissent has a negative impact. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.