Three Essays on Cooperation in a Public Good Experiment

Abstract

At the heart of every environmental dilemma, there are people engaged in the conflict between what is good for the individual and what is good for the group. These dilemmas include public goods – like clean air, biodiversity, and a stable climate – that, regardless of who provides the public good and how much, are shared equally. Public goods are most often provided through mandates, less often through price-based incentives and charitable giving. Recently, we have begun to see innovations in the energy sector that leverage behavioral research to motivate individuals to support renewable energy and conserve electricity. In support of those innovations, this research advances our understanding of voluntary public goods provision by individuals. How? In an extensive public good experiment, I weave together three separate threads of behavioral research to achieve the following objectives: 1) I identified four differently motivated, behavior-based cooperative types – non-cooperators (19%), conditional cooperators (51%), high cooperators (7%), and a previously unclassified group of low cooperators (23%). 2) I established that non-cooperators were not influenced by frame, but conditional, low, and high cooperators were; and the different dimensions of framing design yielded different behavioral responses. Non-neutral language yielded lower cooperation among conditional and low cooperators when they were giving to the public good. Taking instead of giving yielded lower cooperation among low cooperators when neutral language was employed. 3) I also showed that frames indirectly influenced cooperation through beliefs about others’ cooperation. For conditional cooperators, evidence of a beliefs pathway was unequivocal, but not at all present for non-cooperators and mixed for low and high cooperators.