Altruism and voluntary provision of public goods

Abstract

We study how people's predisposition towards altruism affects their behavior in a voluntary contributions public good experiment. We investigate whether a high level of contributions can be sustained in groups of subjects who have been pre-selected on the basis of their altruistic inclinations. In the first stage of the experiment, each subject responds to a psychology questionnaire that measures various dimensions of one''s personality. The subjects are then matched in groups according to their altruism scores, and engage in a voluntary contributions game. We consider whether the levels and dynamics of group contributions differ significantly between the groups with altruists and non-altruists. We find that subjects'' altruism has only a weak positive effect on group behavior in the public good game.Altruism