This study analyzes the role of information in overcoming the twin problems of freeriding and coordination failure that arise in the provision of social services with multiplicity and diminishing marginal return. We consider a model with two public goods, each of which has a threshold of effective contribution such that any costly contributions beyond the threshold generate no benefit. We analyze whether the provision of information on the threshold, which represents the need for contributions to social services, helps improve efficiency. The theoretical analyses predict that information provision enables prosocial individuals to match the thresholds, thus improving outcome efficiency. The experimental analyses confirm this prediction under a dynamic contribution system: the information on thresholds, together with the real-time update of cumulative contributions, promotes the efficient provision of multiple public goods. However, the analysis of contribution timings reveals a side effect of such information: it causes more freeriding when the need is small.

This study considers the twin problems of free riding and coordination failure, which are prevalent in the provision of multiple public goods with diminishing marginal returns. Specifically, we consider a game with two public goods, each of which has an upper bound of effective contribution. Any costly contributions beyond the upper bound are wasted. In this game, the payoff-sum maximizing Pareto-optimal outcome requires the sum of con-tributions by the group members to be equal to the upper bound of each public good, resulting in a coordination problem regarding who contributes to which public good. We theoretically and experimentally examine whether the provision of information on the val-ues of the upper bounds helps overcome these problems and improves efficiency. Theo-retical analysis predicts that this information will improve efficiency because it prompts efficiency-concerned individuals to match the upper bounds of each public good in equi-librium. The experimental results show countervailing effects of providing information; namely, it improves coordination but exacerbates the free-riding problem.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We experimentally investigate the path dependence of voluntary contributions in a public good game with heterogeneous agents who vary in their ability to increase the public good. More specifically, we analyze whether contribution norms observed in a first phase of the experiment under a specific information regime carry over to a second phase with a more or a less transparent regime. We find evidence of path dependence that varies by the ability of agents. Efficient contribution norms establish under common knowledge about heterogeneity and transparency of contributors' ability, and they carry over to another game with less transparency. Other contribution norms that emerged under less transparency are also initially sticky, but they eventually evolve toward an efficient norm under a more transparent information regime. Thus, path dependence may impede but does not prevent efficient contribution norms to prevail in fully transparent settings.

In this article, we experimentally study voluntary contributions of heterogeneous groups to a public good. Members of the same group have either low or high external marginal returns. We vary the level of information about heterogeneity and a contributor's type between groups. Controlling for the net costs of contributions, we find that the level of information determines how types in heterogeneous groups vary in their contributions. When the type of a contributor can be identified, types with high returns contribute more, otherwise the effect disappears or even reverses, with low types contributing more than high types. This result provides evidence for the so-called "poisoning-of-the-well" effect, demonstrating how this effect interacts with the information structure of the environment. Without any information about heterogeneity, there is no difference in contributions by types.

This report describes the household survey of practices and perceptions about waste management in the Philippines. The survey employs a participatory approach involving community members. It was found that a household holds, on the average, 2.69 kg of various wastes at any day. The prominent wastes include plastics, recyclables, and food residues. Despite well-established legal and administrative structures, most people do not know the location of facilities, and the majority do not understand the collection schedule. Respondents support the idea of better waste management and state voluntary contributions well above the environmental fee proposed by the local government.

This article theoretically and experimentally examines the twin problems of free-riding and coordination failure faced by blood banks, by investigating the effects of information provision on the efficiency of blood donation. We augment a standard linear public goods game, incorporating the following features of blood donation: multiplicity of public goods (to reflect intertemporal coordination issues), current and upcoming upper bound demands (to incorporate the perishable nature of blood and the embargo period of consecutive donations), and semi-binary choices (to account for individual options to withhold donations or make donations and when). We analyze whether a provision of deterministic information on the potential blood demand (full information) would improve the efficiency of blood donation when compared to the provision of probabilistic information (partial information). The theory predicts that if each individual maximizes the payoff-sum of all players, then the full information provision would achieve donation efficiency in equilibrium. The results of laboratory experiment show that the full information provision does not improve the efficiency of donation, on an average. We find that full information improves intertemporal coordination, but it worsens the free-riding problem. Although information helps individuals to direct donations in response to the demand, it drives individuals to withhold donations to avoid potential wastage against the risk of donation over the upper bound. When the predicted total demand is relatively small, that is, when strategic uncertainty about others donation matters for achieving efficiency, the provision of information about intertemporal demand in upper bounds tends to lower efficiency because the gdonation withholding h effect becomes dominant.

We study voluntary contribution behavior of individuals who vary in their ability to contribute to a joint project under different information scenarios. We investigate a situation with two types who vary only in their external marginal return (low and high). Results of a laboratory experiment suggest that, when group members are not aware of the heterogeneity in their group, both types make the same nominal contributions. When agents are informed about the heterogeneity, contributions increase but differently by type. High types contribute only more with sufficient social exposure, i.e., when information on the type of the contributor is available. Low types, on the other hand, contribute only more when they are aware of the distribution of types, but have no information on the type of the contributor.

When the provision of public goods requires contributions from individuals with different abilities, solicitation of efficient voluntary contributions from heterogeneous individuals becomes important. Blood banks are one such public resource. Blood banks perform a challenging task in ensuring a balanced supply of blood types to provide effective blood transfusion services. This study designs a field experiment in conjunction with a blood donation campaign to examine whether making potential donors aware of their potential contribution (the net marginal product of their donation) induces efficient individual donation behaviour. During the blood donation campaigns at the university, we conducted a field experiment with two treatments: one treatment with information regarding desired donor profiles for 400 ml whole blood donations and another treatment without such information. We find that the provision of information about desired donor profiles enhances the propensity of able donors to donate, whereas the information provision tends to depress the stated intention to donate.

In addition to showing that student measures of social preference, a concern for outcomes achieved by other reference agents, are quite different from those obtained in the field with participants who face social dilemmas in their daily lives, we find links between the social preferences of our field participants and their productivity at work. We also find that the field stock of social preferences evolves endogenously with respect to how widely team production is utilized. Because the link between productivity and social preference is strong, we provide a reason for the wider economics profession to take notice of social preferences. (JEL C93, D21, D24, H41, J24, M52, Z13).

This article experimentally examines voluntary contributions when group members’ marginal returns to the public good vary. The experiment implements two marginal return types, low and high, and uses the information that members have about the heterogeneity to identify the applied contribution norm. We find that norms vary with the information environment. If agents are aware of the heterogeneity, contributions increase in general. However, high types contribute more than low types when contributions can be linked to the type of the donor but contribute less otherwise. Low types, on the other hand, contributes more than high types when group members are aware of the heterogeneity but contributions cannot be linked to types. Our results underline the importance of the information structure when persons with different abilities contribute to a joint project, as in the context of teamwork or charitable giving.

In the presence of individual heterogeneity, a major problem with egalitarian partnership, such as complete income pooling, is that individuals of comparatively high ability are induced to exit the arrangement. This is nevertheless ignoring the possible impact of social esteem considerations based on a comparison of members' performances. In this paper, drawing inspiration from pooling experiences in a Japanese fishery, we show that the exit problem can be surmounted if sensitivity to social esteem is neither too strong nor too weak. If it is too strong, the lower ability agents will exit out of social shame whereas, if it is too weak, the higher ability agents will not consider it worthwhile to transfer income to their partners. When the arrangement is sustainable, the lower ability people strive towards limiting the income gap.

This paper examines how rotation arrangement between two groups of fishers with different institutional arrangements affects fishing behaviour and economic outcomes in a particular economic environment characterised by price discrimination and product durability. In one group, fishers cooperate and maximise the extraction of rents, while members in the second group behave non-cooperatively. Applying a model of alternating duopoly, we show that the cooperating group behaves like a price discriminating monopolist and tends to uphold prices. When the two groups rotate fishing days the cooperating group tends to produce more, which prevents the non-cooperating group from unprofitable demand preemption.

Models of job tournaments and competitive workplaces more generally predict that while individual effort may increase as competition intensifies between workers, the incentive for workers to cooperate with each other diminishes. We report on a field experiment conducted with workers from a fishing community in Toyama Bay, Japan. Our participants are employed in three different aspects of fishing. The first group are fishermen, the second group are fish wholesalers (or traders), and the third group are staff at the local fishing coop. Although our participants have much in common (e.g., their common relationship to the local fishery and the fact that they all live in the same community), we argue that they are exposed to different amounts of competition on-the-job and that these differences explain differences in cooperation in our experiment. Specifically, fishermen and traders, who interact in more competitive environments are significantly less cooperative than the coop staff who face little competition on the job. Further, after accounting for the possibility of personality-based selection, perceptions of competition faced on-the-job and the treatment effect of job incentives explain these differences in cooperation to a large extent.

This paper draws on research in four communities in the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, to explore how the notion of community and community identity are re-worked in the political spaces created as communities claim collective rights to land. In the cases of the Assynt Crofters' Trust, the Bhaltos Community Trust, and Laid, this has concerned land under crofting tenure; in the case of the claim of the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust, the land on which the Naver Forests stand is the responsibility of the Scottish Ministers and is managed by Forest Enterprise. The four case studies differ with respect to membership and institutional practices and thus provide fertile ground on which to examine, comparatively, collective struggles for the land and the search for sustainable futures.

We study whether a linear income sharing rule (pooling system) can achieve Pareto efficiency in a problem of joint exploitation of fishery resources. When agents are selfish, the homogeneity of individual outputs in equilibrium is a necessary condition for the efficient pooling system. When agents exhibit a preference for status (i.e. for being among the well-performing members of the group), the pooling system can be efficient even without this condition. This is because, on the one hand, relative status considerations enlarge the tolerable range of heterogeneity and, on the other hand, it generates an incentive structure that may homogenise individual output performances.

Abstract This chapter examines the rationale and the viability of pooling arrangements in coastal fisheries in Japan. It is shown that the advantages of coordination and joint operation associated with pooling are reflected in the improved performance of the pooling group. The allocation of effort between fishing locations characterized by different risks (of net damage) and productivities is much closer to optimum in the fully pooling group than in the group where the attempt to pool has largely failed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the rationale and to assess the viability of pooling mechanisms in the specific context of a common property resource, a coastal fishery in Japan. The authors also want to probe into the reasons why some groups (in fact, a minority) opt for pooling while the others do not, or why some groups succeed and some others fail.