Information Feedback, Targeting, and Coordination: An Experimental Study

We experimentally study the role of information targeting and its effect on coordination in a multi-threshold public goods game. To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first to consider this problem. In a lab setting, we consider four treatments, one in which no information is provided and three others that vary in whom we provide the information to: a random sample of subjects; those whose contributions are below the average of their group, and those whose contributions are above the average of their group. We find that random provision of information is no better than providing no information at all. More importantly, the average contributions improve with targeted treatments. Coordination waste is also lower with targeted treatments. The insights from this research may also be relevant to management in contexts such as piracy, teendrinking, among others, where positively or negatively affecting coordination between consumers is of interest.