One bad apple? Heterogeneity and information in public good provision Academic Article

abstract

• 2014, Economic Science Association. Previous research demonstrates that individuals vary in their social preferences. Less well-understood is how group composition affects the behavior of different social preference types. Does one bad apple really spoil the bunch? This paper exogenously identifies experimental participants social preferences, then systematically assigns individuals to homogeneous or heterogeneous groups to examine the impact of bad apples on cooperation and efficiency. Consistent with previous research, we find that groups with more selfish types achieve lower levels of efficiency. We identify two mechanisms for the effect. First, the selfish players contribute less. Second, selfish players induce lower contributions from the conditional cooperators, and this effect increases in the number of selfish players. These results are not sensitive to information about the distribution of types in the group.

authors

• Eckel, Catherine

published proceedings

• EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS

altmetric score

• 1.85

author list (cited authors)

• de Oliveira, A., Croson, R., & Eckel, C.

citation count

• 45

complete list of authors

• de Oliveira, Angela CM||Croson, Rachel TA||Eckel, Catherine

publication date

• March 2015

publisher

• Springer Nature  Publisher

published in

• Experimental Economics  Journal

keywords

• Cooperation
• Group Composition
• Heterogeneity
• Public Goods
• Social Preference Types

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

• 10.1007/s10683-014-9412-1

start page

• 116

end page

• 135

volume

• 18

issue

• 1

URL

• http%3A%2F%2Fdx.doi.org%2F10.1007%2Fs10683-014-9412-1