PRODUCTION OF PUBLIC GOODS AND THE FREE-RIDING PROBLEM

Leading The Ignorant: Can Ignorance Eliminate The Free Riding Problem?

Heterogeneous Social Preferences and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods

We provide a direct test of the role of social preferences in voluntary cooperation. We elicit individuals’ cooperation preference in one experiment and make a point prediction about the contribution to a repeated public good. This allows for a novel test as to whether there are "types" of players who behave consistently with their elicited preferences. We find clear-cut evidence for the existe...

Neural Mechanisms of Free-riding and Cooperation in a Public Goods Game: An EEG Hyperscanning Study

The public goods (PG) game is a standard game design for investigating the cooperating and freeriding behavior of humans. The game models a simplified version of social interaction. The result of each trial is affected by the decisions of each player; thus, one should consider the number of cooperators and the result of the last trial. There have been several attempts to uncover the underlying ...

Group size and free riding when private and public goods are gross substitutes *

Using the traditional model of voluntary public good provision, it is shown that an expansion of group size exacerbates free riding tendencies as long as private consumption and the public good are strictly normal and weak gross substitutes. This result generalizes a previous Cobb–Douglas example with respect to preferences and asymmetric equilibria.  2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights rese...

An Epistemic Free-Riding Problem?

An Epistemic Free-Riding Problem? Christian List and Philip Pettit 1 August 2003 Karl Popper noted that, when social scientists are members of the society they study, they may affect that society. If the individuals to whom a theory initially applies come to understand that theory, then this understanding may affect their behaviour in such a way that the theory ceases to be applicable. This may...