Framing effects in public good games: Choices or externalities?

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.We disentangle the effects of choice (give vs. take) and externality (positive vs. negative) framing of decisions in isomorphic and payoff-equivalent experimental public good games. We find that, at the aggregate level, neither frame affects group contributions. At the individual level, the Take choice frame leads to greater free-riding, and also to somewhat higher contributions, i.e., to more extreme contribution behaviour

O Free Rider e a Sustentabilidade Sob a Ótica da Economia Comportamental

Este ensaio teve propósito debater as contribuições da economia comportamental e, em especial, dos resultados decorrentes da aplicação do jogo do bem público, para a promoção da sustentabilidade. Em meio aos movimentos internacionais para a preservação do meio ambiente, partiu-se da premissa de que, em primeira instância, são as decisões individuais e seus desdobramentos que podem fazer a diferença. Abordaram-se, então, os dilemas individuais do referido jogo, e os incentivos que o free rider potencialmente se depara, especialmente quanto à possibilidade de usufruir do bem público a partir das contribuições alheias. Reconhecendo alguns resultados que poderiam inibir o comportamento egoístico, são apresentadas as suas interfaces com a preservação do meio ambiente

Essays in behavioral economics

The collection of essays included herein studies different forms of reciprocal behavior, voluntary contributions towards a public project, and price setting and trading behavior in monopolistic asset markets. In paper 1, we examine reciprocity in an experiment using a sequential dictator game where the first round recipient becomes the second round dictator. We separate between three types of reciprocity: Direct reciprocity occurs when the second round dictator responses directly to the first round dictator. A second round dictator shows indirect reciprocity when she has not taken part in the first round play, but yet reacts to it when deciding how much to allocate to the first round dictator. In generalized reciprocity, the second round dictator has possibly received allocation in the first round but responses to someone else than the first round dictator. Our results show evidence of strong reciprocity in all three cases, in particular direct and generalized reciprocity are equally intense. In paper 2, we examine the effect of distributional and reciprocal motivation on the behavior. We conduct an experiment with a two round dictator game. In our baseline treatment, the first round game is a standard dictator game. In the second round, we introduce a third player who will decide how to allocate her endowment and the endowments of the first round players between these three players. We also run a treatment in which the first round allocation is replaced by a random division. In both treatments, on the average, the second round dictators redistributed one half of the first round endowment to themselves, keeping almost two thirds of the total endowment. We find that intentions matter in the case of extremely unfair first round allocation. In paper 3, I study experimentally a voluntary contribution game in which returns from the private project have diminishing marginal benefits and the contributions to the joint project exhibit pairwise strategic complementarities. As a control I use a public good game with an identical private production, but standard public good aggregation. A significant over-contribution is observed in both settings when the group size is 5, but it is much higher under the complementary technology, and drops drastically when the group size is reduced. In paper 4, we study the price setting behavior of monopolist sellers and bids made by buyers. The buyers receive private information about the fundamental value of an asset and make a bid for it in an exogenously and randomly determined order. We find that the sellers failed to update their prices both upwards and downward after receiving new information. This sluggish updating strategy turned out beneficial, as theoretically optimal higher prices assuming common knowledge of rationality among traders trades would have led to fewer trades, and the higher price would not have been enough to offset the losses incurred from trades forfeited

Cooperation and strategic complementarity: An experiment with two voluntary contribution mechanism games with interior equilibria

In public goods game experiments, designs implementing non-linearities in the production are less common than the standard linear setting, especially so under the assumption that the private goods production and public goods aggregation function are both non-linear. We study a voluntary contribution game (VCM) in which returns from the private project have diminishing marginal benefits and the contributions to the joint project exhibit pairwise strategic complementarities. As a control, we use a public goods game with an identical private production technology, but with the standard linear public goods aggregation. In addition to the aggregation technology, we manipulate the group size variable: In both treatments, the subjects will first play a VCM game in groups of five for 20 rounds, after which the group size is reduced to two, and the game is played for another 20 rounds. A significant over-contribution is observed in both settings when the group size is five. The rate of over-contribution is much higher under the complementary technology, but as predicted by theory, the contributions drop drastically when the group size is reduced from n = 5 to n = 2 within this treatment. Our experiment also provides empirical evidence that the so-called group size effect is present in both treatments, but it is much weaker under the standard aggregation technology.                                                                                                                      -</p

Contextualised strong reciprocity explains selfless cooperation despite selfish intuitions and weak social heuristics

Humans frequently cooperate for collective benefit, even in one-shot social dilemmas. This provides a challenge for theories of cooperation. Two views focus on intuitions but offer conflicting explanations. The Social Heuristics Hypothesis argues that people with selfish preferences rely on cooperative intuitions and predicts that deliberation reduces cooperation. The Self-Control Account emphasizes control over selfish intuitions and is consistent with strong reciprocity—a preference for conditional cooperation in one-shot dilemmas. Here, we reconcile these explanations with each other as well as with strong reciprocity. We study one-shot cooperation across two main dilemma contexts, provision and maintenance, and show that cooperation is higher in provision than maintenance. Using time-limit manipulations, we experimentally study the cognitive processes underlying this robust result. Supporting the Self-Control Account, people are intuitively selfish in maintenance, with deliberation increasing cooperation. In contrast, consistent with the Social Heuristics Hypothesis, deliberation tends to increase the likelihood of free-riding in provision. Contextual differences between maintenance and provision are observed across additional measures: reaction time patterns of cooperation; social dilemma understanding; perceptions of social appropriateness; beliefs about others’ cooperation; and cooperation preferences. Despite these dilemma-specific asymmetries, we show that preferences, coupled with beliefs, successfully predict the high levels of cooperation in both maintenance and provision dilemmas. While the effects of intuitions are context-dependent and small, the widespread preference for strong reciprocity is the primary driver of one-shot cooperation. We advance the Contextualised Strong Reciprocity account as a unifying framework and consider its implications for research and policy

Preferences and Perceptions in Provision and Maintenance Public Goods

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 four lab and online experiments (,105), 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

O uso de jogos eletrônicos no ensino de conceitos básicos de inovação: compreendendo o uso da tecnologia

Introduction - Electronic games are the object of great human and cultural fascination, causing significant impacts on society and contributing to impactful innovations in the way they are used. Objective - To understand the history of electronic games and their relationship with technological innovation and computational technologies, to study their feasibility and impact with the creation of a game prototype around innovation. Methodology - Investigative research with exhaustive bibliographic deepening of the history of electronic games and most impactful innovations. Deductive and exploratory, producing from the acquired knowledge a prototype of an electronic game around innovation with application and data collection. Results - The IDEABREAKER game prototype was created, which deals with basic concepts of innovation where an audience of 200 people tested the application with significant engagement results. 51% of users played more than once, 96.5% played at least once and the average playing time was 15% longer than the control average. Conclusions - Electronic games are a potential tool for use around innovation and for the dissemination of related knowledge in a productive way and with a high potential for engagement.Introdução - Os jogos eletrônicos são objeto de grande deslumbramento humano e cultural causando impactos significativos na sociedade e contribuindo para inovações impactantes na sua forma de uso. Objetivo - Compreender a história dos jogos eletrônicos e sua relação com a inovação tecnológica e as tecnologias computacionais, estudar sua viabilidade e impacto com a criação de um protótipo de jogo na área de inovação. Metodologia - Pesquisa investigativa com exaustivo aprofundamento bibliográfico da história dos jogos eletrônicos e inovações mais impactantes. Dedutiva e exploratória produzindo a partir dos conhecimentos adquiridos um protótipo de jogo eletrônico na área da inovação com aplicação e coleta de dados. Resultados - Foi concebido o protótipo IDEABREAKER jogo que trata de conceitos básicos de inovação onde um público de 200 pessoas testou o aplicativo com resultados significativos de engajamento. 51% dos usuários jogaram mais de uma única vez, 96,5% jogaram ao menos uma única vez e o tempo médio de jogo foi 15% maior que a média de controle. Conclusões – Jogos eletrônicos são uma potencial ferramenta para uso na área de inovação e para a disseminação do conhecimento relacionado de forma produtiva e com alto potencial de engajamento

Deliberation, Democracy, and Mechanisms for Cooperation

This thesis explores group decision-making and mechanisms to encourage cooperation through three experimental studies. Study one uses a public goods game (PGG) with informal and formal sanction mechanisms to understand how team decision-making differs from individual decision-making in a democratic institutional setting. Teams consistently outperform individuals when sanctioning schemes are available, by selecting higher sanction rates when choosing the formal scheme and pro-socially targeting punishment toward low-cooperators when using the informal scheme. This improved decision-making appears to be a result of deliberation and has implications for using team decision-making to overcome moral hazards. Building on this, study two examines team behaviour in a real effort experiment to understand the impact of democratic decision-making. Specifically, in one treatment teams may vote on whether to implement a policy that reduces the returns from free-riding within their group, while in the other treatment, this policy is randomly implemented. Teams exhibit significantly higher productivity when they are able to democratically decide whether to implement the policy, regardless of the vote outcome. While teams in these treatments also increase their time free-riding, the higher productivity compensates for this and so it does not harm overall production. As in the first chapter, this study highlights the benefits of autonomous team-decision making in improving cooperation. Study three explores how a group may encourage cooperation to prevent a more costly problem in a two-stage PGG. Subjects complete real effort tasks that either reward them directly or improve the payoff schedule in the following stage, forming a second-order social dilemma. Free-riding does not dominate the pre-stage nor does cooperation decline as strongly as observed in other PGG, demonstrating how leveraging fewer resources to overcome related social dilemmas can make cooperation easier. Further, providing a simple cost- and ramification-free feedback mechanism considerably increases the level of cooperation observed

Framing and Feedback in Social Dilemmas with Partners and Strangers

We study framing effects in repeated social dilemmas by comparing payoff-equivalent Give- and Take-framed public goods games under varying matching mechanisms (Partners or Strangers) and levels of feedback (Aggregate or Individual). In the Give-framed game, players contribute to a public good, while in the Take-framed game, players take from an existing public good. The results show Take framing and Individual-level feedback lead to more extreme behavior (free-riding and full cooperation), especially for Partners. These results suggest Take framing and Individual-level feedback increase the variability of cooperation