Only for my own neighborhood? Preferences and voluntary provision of local and global public goods

While public goods are defined as non-rival and non-excludable, there are degrees of excludability. This paper reports on the results of a series of experiments designed to investigate the role of preferences on individual willingness to contribute to the provision of a group (excludable) versus a global (non-excludable) public good. The results of this experiment show that when the average per capita return (APCR) to society of the global public good exceeds the APCR to society of the group public good, individuals contribute more to the global good but do not reduce their contributions to the group public good. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.