Enforcement of contribution norms in public good games with heterogeneous populations

By Ernesto Reuben, Arno Riedl. Games Econ. Behav., 2009

336 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Economic and social interaction takes place between individuals with heterogeneous characteristics. We investigate experimentally the emergence and informal enforcement of different contribution norms to a public good in homogeneous and different heterogeneous groups. When punishment is not allowed all groups converge towards free-riding. With punishment, contributions increase and differ distinctly across groups and individuals with different induced characteristics. We show econometrically that these differences are not accidentally but enforced by punishment. The enforced contribution norms are related to fairness ideas of equity regarding the contributions but not regarding the earnings. Individuals with different characteristics tacitly agree on the norm to be enforced, even if this leads to large payoff differences. Our results also emphasize the role of details of the environment that may alter focal contribution norms in an important way.

Subfields: Demography, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3ad4a6568405b5fcff7ad5cf5ef7d49b01cac963

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Demography

In Safety Research

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Normative conflict and feuds: The limits of self-enforcement (2012, background): “As in Reuben and Riedl (2011), if normative conflict exists in the Asymmetric treatment, one would expect some low-return individuals to reduce the earnings of high-return group members when they contribute the same amount as they do, punishing conformity to the equal-contribution norm.”