The Impact of Cooperation Defaults on Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods†
نویسندگان
چکیده
This paper reports evidence from an experiment that was conducted to test the influence of non-binding default rules on voluntary cooperation. We find that contributions to a public good increase significantly when a cooperative default is implemented. Non-binding defaults particularly influence contribution decisions of participants with lower levels of cognitive reflection whereas contributions of participants with high CRT scores are virtually unaffected. Compared to an environment with uncooperative contribution default, cooperative default options increase subjects’ earnings independent of their individual levels of contribution. This suggests that cooperation defaults can effectively be used as a welfare-enhancing policy in the spirit of “libertarian paternalism”.
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