Communication and punishment in voluntary contribution experiments

Olivier Bochet; Talbot Page; Louis Putterman

doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2003.06.006

Communication and punishment in voluntary contribution experiments

Olivier Bochet, Talbot Page, Louis Putterman

Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

We compare three forms of communication and punishment as incentives to increase contributions to public goods in laboratory experiments. We find, as in earlier experiments, that face-to-face communication has very strong effects, but surprisingly that verbal communication through a chat room preserving anonymity and excluding facial expression, etc. was almost as efficient. Numerical communication, via computer terminals, had no net effect on contributions or efficiency. Punishment, as in earlier experiments, increased contributions but because of its cost had little net effect on efficiency.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	11-26
Number of pages	16
Journal	Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
Volume	60
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2003.06.006
State	Published - May 2006

Keywords

Cheap talk
Collective action
Communication
Public goods
Punishment

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Economics and Econometrics
Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

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title = "Communication and punishment in voluntary contribution experiments",

abstract = "We compare three forms of communication and punishment as incentives to increase contributions to public goods in laboratory experiments. We find, as in earlier experiments, that face-to-face communication has very strong effects, but surprisingly that verbal communication through a chat room preserving anonymity and excluding facial expression, etc. was almost as efficient. Numerical communication, via computer terminals, had no net effect on contributions or efficiency. Punishment, as in earlier experiments, increased contributions but because of its cost had little net effect on efficiency.",

keywords = "Cheap talk, Collective action, Communication, Public goods, Punishment",

author = "Olivier Bochet and Talbot Page and Louis Putterman",

note = "Funding Information: The research reported here has been supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant SES-0001769) and the MacArthur Foundation Norms and Preferences Network. We thank George Athanassacopoulos, Mark Faktorovich, Chris Horn, Robert Letzler, John Mello, and Xiaotong Wang for their supporting roles on our research team. We thank Norman Frohlich, Joe Oppenheimer, Jeannette Brosig and Axel Ockenfels for helpful responses to inquiries, and Ernst Fehr and Simon G{\"a}chter for kind encouragement. ",

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AU - Page, Talbot

AU - Putterman, Louis

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PY - 2006/5

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N2 - We compare three forms of communication and punishment as incentives to increase contributions to public goods in laboratory experiments. We find, as in earlier experiments, that face-to-face communication has very strong effects, but surprisingly that verbal communication through a chat room preserving anonymity and excluding facial expression, etc. was almost as efficient. Numerical communication, via computer terminals, had no net effect on contributions or efficiency. Punishment, as in earlier experiments, increased contributions but because of its cost had little net effect on efficiency.

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