Suchergebnisse

In some important multiplayer situations, such as efforts to supply a global public good, players can
choose the game they want to play. In this paper we conduct an experimental test of the decision by a
group with fixed membership, playing over a finite number of periods, to choose between a "tipping"
game, in which every player wants to contribute to the public good provided enough other players
contribute, and a prisoners' dilemma, the classic cooperation game. In the prisoners' dilemma, the
first best outcome is attainable, but cannot be sustained as a Nash equilibrium. In the tipping game,
only a second best outcome may be attainable, but there exists a Nash equilibrium that is strictly
preferred to the one in the prisoners' dilemma. We show that many groups persistently choose the
prisoners' dilemma despite its strategic disadvantage, and that the groups that eventually choose
the tipping game do better than the ones that stick with the prisoners' dilemma.


The work was financially supported by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the ERC Starting Grant "Human Cooperation to Protect the Global Commons" (HUCO, Project number: 636746).

Internet services are often free of charge, but ask for customers' personal data in exchange for usage. We experimentally study whether the provision of information-based public goods is susceptible to restraint when contributions not only make contributors better off, but also enable a non-contributing "big player" to acquire substantial profits. We show that the presence of the big player crowds out the willingness to provide money, but no such effect is observed for information. Hence, collecting anonymized personal data instead of monetary fees can be more profitable to service providers and create greater benefits for customers.

A novelty of the new Paris Agreement is the inclusion of a process for assessment and review of countries' nationally determined pledges and contributions. The intent is to reveal whether similar countries are making comparable pledges, whether the totality of such pledges will achieve the global goal, and whether, over the coming years, the contributions actually made by countries will equal or exceed their pledges. The intent is also to provide an opportunity for countries to express their approval, or disapproval, of the pledges and contributions made by individual countries. Here we report the results of a lab experiment on the effects of such a process in a game in which players choose a group target, declare their individual pledges, and then make voluntary contributions to supply a public good. Our results show that a review process is more likely to affect targets and pledges than actual contributions. Even when a review process increases average contributions, the effect is relatively small. As the window for achieving the 2 °C goal will close soon, our results suggest that, rather than merely implement the Paris Agreement, negotiators should begin now to develop complementary approaches to limiting emissions, including the adoption of agreements that are designed differently than the one adopted in Paris.

In the intertemporal common-pool resource game, non-cooperative behavior produces externalities reducing subjects' payoffs in both the present and the future. In this paper, we investigate through two experiments whether binding contracts, non-binding promises and social feedback help to promote sustainable behavior. We find that cooperation is higher in groups where a contract can be signed or where subjects made a promise to cooperate throughout the experiment. However, not all groups sign the contract unanimously and subjects who made a promise adjust their cooperation downwards over time. We find no difference between the control condition without any regulation and the treatment condition in which subjects receive feedback on their past behavior in private. However, if received feedback can be learned by all group members, cooperation is significantly higher. Our findings show that non-binding promises and social feedback increase cooperation, but the former only in the short-run and the latter only if made public.

Answers to cognitive probes implemented in (cross-national) web surveys ("web probing")
(1) Replication of closed-ended items on attitudes towards immigrants from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP), addition of a follow-up probe:
Immigrants increase crime rates.
Immigrants are generally good for Germany's economy.
Immigrants take jobs away from people who were born in Germany.
Immigrants improve German society by bringing in new ideas and cultures.
Probe after each item (split): Which type of immigrants were you thinking of when you answered the question?

The study and results are described in detail here:
Braun, Michael, Dorothée Behr, and Lars Kaczmirek. 2013. "Assessing cross-national equivalence of measures of xenophobia: evidence from probing in web surveys." International Journal of Public Opinion Research 25 (3): 383-395. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/eds034.

(2) Replication of item on civil disobedience from the ISSP, addition of a follow-up probe:
How important is it that citizens may engage in acts of civil disobedience when they oppose government actions? (Not at all important 1 ... Very important 7)
Probe: What ideas do you associate with the phrase "civil disobedience"? Please give examples.

The study and results are described in detail here:
Behr, Dorothée, Michael Braun, Lars Kaczmirek, and Wolfgang Bandilla. 2014. "Item comparability in cross-national surveys: results from asking probing questions in cross-national web surveys about attitudes towards civil disobedience." Quality & Quantity 48 (1): 127-148. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11135-012-9754-8.