Voluntary participation and cooperation in a collective-good game

Abstract

We study the effect of voluntary participation in the context of a collective-good experiment. We investigate whether the freedom to participate in the game or not can affect contribution levels over time. The analysis of two voluntary-participation treatments supports a noticeable effect of an attractive exit option on contribution levels. We conclude that voluntary participation can induce a recovery of cooperation levels when the payoff yielded by the exit option is high enough, so that the usually observed decay of average contribution levels can be counteracted.Social dilemma Cooperation Voluntary participation Public-good experiments