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Heterogeneous Agents in Public Goods Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Roberto M. Burlando  and
Francesco Guala
Roberto M. Burlando*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Torino, Italy and School of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK
Francesco Guala*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Philosophy, University of Exeter, UK
*
email: [email protected]
email: [email protected]
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Abstract

We explore by purely experimental means a heterogeneous agents scenario in experimental public goods games, assuming the existence of at least three types of player: free riders, cooperators, and reciprocators. We identify the various types by means of four classification methods, and then play the public goods game with homogeneous groups. We observe that (1) the average contribution level is enhanced in this setting; (2) the decay phenomenon is replicated in groups of ‘pure’ free riders, whereas in groups of cooperative and reciprocating players the contribution is high and fairly stable throughout the game.

Keywords

economic experimentvoluntary contributionheterogeneous agentsreciprocation

JEL classification

H41: Public Goods C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior
Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , April 2005 , pp. 35 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

*

The experiments reported in this paper were financed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory and the Computational and Experimental Economics Laboratory of the University of Trento. We would like to thank Marco Tecilla, Macrina Marchesin and Dino Parisi for their help in running the experiments, and Luigi Mittone, director of CEEL, for letting us use the laboratory's resources. Paul Webley, Robert Moir, seminar participants at the Universities of Pisa and Trento, Charles Holt and two anonymous referees provided very useful comments on a previous draft.

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