Dealing with the aversion to the sucker's payoff in public goods games

Douadia Bougherara (1) , Sandrine Costa (2) , Gilles Grolleau (3, 4) , Lisette Ibanez (3)

1 SMART-LERECO - Structures et Marché Agricoles, Ressources et Territoires
2 LEF - Laboratoire d'Economie Forestière
3 LAMETA - Laboratoire Montpelliérain d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée
4 Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques

A usual explanation to low levels of contribution to public goods is the fear of getting the sucker’s payoff (cooperation by the participant and defection by the other players). In order to disentangle the effect of this fear from other motives, we design a public good game where people have an insurance against getting the sucker’s payoff. We show that contributions to the public good under this ‘protective’ design are significantly higher and interact with expectations on other individuals' contribution to the public good. Some policy implications and extensions are suggested.

Mots clés: EXPERIMENT; PUBLIC GOOD; SUCKERS PAYOFF; ASSURANCE

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Douadia Bougherara, Sandrine Costa, Gilles Grolleau, Lisette Ibanez. Dealing with the aversion to the sucker's payoff in public goods games. 2009. ⟨hal-01189512⟩