Cross-national gender differences in behavior in a threshold public goods game: Japan versus Canada

To investigate the effects of gender and national culture on economic behavior, we compare all-male and all-female groups from Japan and Canada in the context of a threshold public goods game with a strong free-riding equilibrium and many socially efficient threshold equilibria. Females and Canadians exhibit higher levels of conformity when compared with males and Japanese, respectively. However, such symmetric group behavior translates into significantly tighter equilibrium convergence only for Canadian females. Canadians, particularly Canadian females, are more successful at providing the public good than Japanese. The results suggest that the prevalence of different notions of self-construal may affect behavior. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.