Abstract
This research concerns how costs and benefits affect the voluntary provision of threshold public goods. Cadsby and Maynes (J. Public Econ. 71:53-73, 1999) hypothesized that the difference between the value and cost of such a good, its net reward, influences the likelihood of provision. Croson and Marks (Exp. Econ. 2:239-259, 2000) focused on the ratio of group payoff to total cost, the step return. We find that step return is the best predictor overall, although net reward has some impact, negatively affecting the probability of provision with inexperienced participants and positively affecting it with experienced participants.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 277-289 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Public Choice |
Volume | 135 |
Issue number | 3-4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 1 2008 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgements We would like to thank Fei Song, Nat Wilcox and participants at the Economic Science Association meetings for helpful comments. Diana Shores and Janet Sanchez-Stuart provided excellent research assistance. Cadsby and Maynes gratefully acknowledge funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant #410-2001-1590. Croson gratefully acknowledges funding from the National Science Foundation, grant #SBR-9876079.
Keywords
- Adversarial collaboration
- Experiment
- Net reward
- Step return
- Threshold public good