Cooperation is unaffected by the threat of severe adverse events in public goods games

In the context of a one-shot public goods game with a large group size and a low marginal per capita return, we study if and how cooperation is affected by the presence of environmental risk - defined as an exogenous stochastic process that generates a severe adverse event with a very small probability - and by the correlation of such risk among the group members. More specifically, we run an online experiment to investigate the effect of a risk that is independent across group members, a risk that is positively correlated among group members, and a risk that is negatively correlated among group members on cooperation. We find that neither the presence nor the correlation of risk significantly affects individual contributions.

Automated summary

In this study, we investigated the impact of environmental risk and correlation of risk among group members on cooperation in a one-shot public goods game. We found that neither the presence nor the correlation of risk significantly affected individual contributions.