Journal
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
Volume 181, Issue -, Pages 39-48Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.11.030
Keywords
Public goods; Conditional cooperation; Gender; Experiment
Categories
Funding
- Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsradet)
- Formas through the program Human Cooperation to Manage Natural Resources (COMMONS)
- Ideenfonds of the University of Munich
- German Science Foundation [GRK 801]
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The study suggests that women are more likely to be classified as conditionally cooperative in social dilemmas, while men are more likely to be free riders. Beliefs play a significant role in shaping unconditional contributions, with women being more sensitive to these beliefs.
Evidence of gender differences in cooperation in social dilemmas is inconclusive. This paper experimentally elicits unconditional contributions, a contribution vector (cooperative preferences), and beliefs about the level of others' contributions in variants of the public goods game. We show that existing inconclusive results can be understood when controlling for beliefs and underlying cooperative preferences. Robustness checks of our original data from Germany, based on data from six countries around the world, confirm our main empirical results: Women are significantly more often classified as conditionally cooperative than men, while men are more likely to be free riders. Beliefs play an important role in shaping unconditional contributions, supporting the view that these are more malleable or sensitive to subtle cues in women than in men. (c) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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